GlobalGiving

History

Before founding GlobalGiving, Mari Kuraishi and Dennis Whittle were heads of strategy and innovation at the World Bank. While in that post, they created the first-ever Innovation Marketplace for Bank staff in 1998, an internal competition in which Bank employees pitched their own ideas for fighting poverty worldwide. The winners received grants to make their ideas happen. The competition resulted in some of the most innovative ideas and effective programs in World Bank history.

In 2000, they took the concept and competition to the outside world. The Development Marketplace enabled any social entrepreneur to compete for Bank funds. The program was extremely successful — finalists from all over the world gathered in Washington, D.C., and $5 million was awarded to the 44 most innovative projects.

Based on the Marketplaces' success, Mari and Dennis created an Internet-based platform to facilitate a broader range of social and economic investments in developing countries. In October 2000, they left the World Bank and on February 14, 2002, GlobalGiving (formerly DevelopmentSpace) was launched.

Major funding for the launch and early stages was provided by the Omidyar Network, the Skoll Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Sall Foundation. GlobalGiving was launched as collaboration between the GlobalGiving Foundation and ManyFutures, Inc. In December 2008, ManyFutures became a formal subsidiary of the GlobalGiving Foundation, and all operations were placed under direct foundation management.

Structure

The GlobalGiving Foundation (GGF) is a non-profit organization that individuals and companies can donate to through the website globalgiving.org. It is supported by a network of implementing, corporate and institutional partners.

Potential donors can browse and select from a wide offering of projects that are organized by geography or by themes such as health care, the environment and education. A donor can contribute any amount using a credit/debit card, check, PayPal, Apple Pay, or stock transfer. Gift registries can be set up for special events, and donors can purchase gift cards which recipients can redeem in support of a project of their choosing.

These contributions directly support the entrepreneurial work of global project leaders who are bringing innovative, empowering solutions to challenging social problems at the local community level. To create an interactive relationship between the project and donors, project leaders send regular updates to their donors regarding the progress and impact of the project and donors are invited to submit comments.

GlobalGiving funds itself by requesting the donor add a 15% donation to GlobalGiving to their gift or by retaining a 15% transaction fee from the amount pledged to the charity. These fees cover credit card processing, the cost of providing support and training to nonprofits, and a small portion of administrative cost. In addition, GlobalGiving covers its expenses by providing companies with strategic philanthropy services including grantmaking and vetting.

Companies can also use the GlobalGiving platform to allow their employees, customers, partners, or foundation entities to donate directly to grassroots social and economic development projects around the world. And non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Ashoka: Innovators for the Public and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative use the system to load projects designed by grassroots groups that they stand behind.

GlobalGiving as a web-based fundraising platform is fundamentally different from the World Bank Development Marketplace because it is based on social networks and real-time feedback between donors and grassroots social entrepreneurs or "project leaders." Each organization pitches one or more development projects to prospective donors on the website. The funding decision for each project is crowd-sourced to the public, rather than determined by a team of experts, as in the Development Marketplace. However, in practice, organizations that promote themselves through email and social media campaigns vastly improve their fundraising potential. Each project depends on evangelists (people who spread good news) to flourish. The funding and project update history for each project is public and acts as a form of reputation system for the organization implementing the project.

Disaster Relief

In response to natural disasters and humanitarian crises, GlobalGiving regularly launches relief funds to support nonprofits helping those in need. John Hecklinger, GlobalGiving’s Chief Program Officer, explains the organization’s approach to disaster response funding this way:

"Generally, we believe local organizations are best-positioned to assess and to respond to needs, so we listen carefully to what they deem to be most critical. Our view is that locally-run organizations can nimbly and effectively provide for immediate and ongoing community needs. Getting funds to them benefits communities directly and quickly."

GlobalGiving’s community of nonprofits, donors, and companies has funded relief work in response to the Nepal earthquake in 2015, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, and the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, among others. GlobalGiving is regularly recommended by USAID's Center for International Disaster Information to donors looking to support disaster relief efforts.

Reviews

GlobalGiving earned Charity Navigator's highest rating of four stars in the latest ratings published by the charity evaluator. The Better Business Bureau's 2015 review states that GlobalGiving meets all of its charity accreditation standards.