New July 15, 2007~ Blog on fundraising articles, http://smart-accounts.blogspot.com
Fundraising isn't working well today and needs new business models. This writer developed a series of designs from a new approach to ecommerce: online financial accounts that can reproduce at their owner's command, creating new accounts that can inherit any number of capabilities, and evolve in grassroots community use (the idea is confusing at first because it is so new -- we will explain). From this basic idea come potential fundraising innovations that you never heard of before. In this series of four short articles we put some of them on the table for public discussion and use. All our work is rights-free.
We published a shorter version of the following articles in AIDS Treatment News, in mid July 2007. It may be easiest to read them in order, but each is intended to be understandable alone.
The last article is more difficult, since people have trouble grasping the idea of financial accounts with ancestors and descendants -- accounts that are born instantly ready to use, with hundreds of capabilities and settings that their owners can change (with the changes inherited through future generations, like mutations). These accounts will evolve by selection in family trees, toward becoming more attractive and useful to people.
Why is fundraising so hard when millions of people want to help, and have plenty of surplus money between them -- thousands of times what AIDS and health activism would need? How could we provide better opportunities for giving? [2007-07-14]
Full article: http://www.aidsnews.org/2007/07/fundr-overview.html
Fundraising campaigns could be elaborate local or global contests or games to raise money for good causes -- showing financial results instantly, costing almost nothing, and letting donors, teams and individual fundraisers make their mark. [2007-07-14]
Full article: http://www.aidsnews.org/2007/07/fundr-fundathon.html
Suppose a major donor anywhere in the world could sponsor tens of thousands (or any number) of copies of a song, video, or any other digital "content" -- letting tens of thousands of people in social networks just click to download free, with no registration ever, instantly paying the artists or a cause by the act of free downloading itself. And each sponsor can deliver his or her own message to the thousands of anonymous end users who download from his or her contribution -- one of several major incentives for sponsors. We show how independent artists could market globally at no expense if people care about their work -- offering an alternative to corporate monoculture. Or they could donate their digital art to an organization that sells it this way to raise funds. [2007-07-11]
Full article: http://www.aidsnews.org/2007/07/fundr-url.html
Here we show the power of this idea, and some unusual business and fundraising models it will make possible. [2007-07-10]
Full article: http://www.aidsnews.org/2007/07/fundr-reproduce.html