Vote For Philanthropy Game Changers on Huffington Post Today!

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-10-30 17:47:00 UTC
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The media network Huffington Post is identifying the folks in a variety of fields who are changing the shape of their industries. In ten different areas, they've nominated 10 "game changers," and it's up to the masses to decide who is really changing things.

They've just opened the voting on the Philanthropy game changer and there are some familiar faces:

  • Matt Flannery: founder of microlending portal Kiva

  • Perla Ni: founder of Great Nonprofits, a rating and review site for people to share their feedback about civil society organizations

  • Ben Rigby, Jacob Colker, Sundeep Ahuja: founders of The Extraordinaries, the new platform for translating spare time into social action

  • Lucy Bernholz: Philanthropy blogger and expert who is constantly pushing the field

  • Kushal Chakrabarti: founder of Vittana, the platform for peer-to-peer education loans

  • Charles Best: the founder of DonorsChoose.org, the platform for peer-to-peer donations for classroom programs

  • Bill Drayton: the godfather of social entrepreneurship and founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

  • Jeff Skoll: the other godfather of social entrepreneurship and co-founder of eBay whose foundation has invested heavily in the movement

  • Sean Parker: co-founder of Facebook Causes (and before that Facebook, and Napster), the online giving platform

  • and yes, Michael Bloomberg: Mayor of New York City who has invested in making it easier for New Yorkers to serve their community

There are a couple interesting things about the list:

1) Preponderance of technology-focused organizations. Part of this could be a selection bias, as Huffington Post is at the forefront of News 2.0, but a full 7 out of the 10 nominees are using the internet to build new types of philanthropic platforms. Jeff Skoll isn't doing that, but made his money there.

2) Geographic concentration: This perhaps follows from #1, but 6 of the 10 are based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bloomberg and Best are in New York City; Chakrabarti in Seattle and Drayton in D.C. Even in the internet-era, physical proximity matters.

3) The two more "institutional" actors are social entrepreneurship foundation types.

Who are you going to vote for? Who isn't on this list but should be?

Photo: Philanthropy blogger guru Lucy Bernholz

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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