Why Give? Because Your (College Nonprofit Entrepreneur) Friends Asked

For the past week, there has been a great conversation over at Tactical Philanthropy about why people give. As a relatively wonky community, the answers to that question have involved a lot of great theories and a number of acronyms. I believe the single most important answer is that you give because your friends asked. And in the next 10 years, as the number of young people involved with or just a step away from social ventures increases, this is only going to become more important.

In a response to the conversation, Network for Good's Katya Andresen puts the reasons for giving in two big categories: personal return on investment (the feeling of having done good) and social return on investment (a dispassionate analysis of actually having achieved some social objective).

I would argue that most of the $200-some odd dollars of money donated to philanthropic causes by individual American citizens each year are donated with an implicit "outsourcing" of the social return on investment part of the equation.

First, about half of all individual donations go to religious institutions. Many of those dollars end up channeled to other causes, but the logic is largely about the personal return of having contributed to an institution that is important to you, while at the same time trusting that those institutions will use the money for real good.

What's more, you could make an argument that all nonprofit donor pitches more or less come down to making sure that you feel good about your gift, and working their damndest to convince you that they are competent to ensure that social impact, as well.

What's increasingly even important than these two examples of outsourcing the social return on philanthropic investment however, is the ease with which friends can ask one another to support their causes.

At the core of many nonprofit's excitement about online giving is the ability for staff and supporters to harness the rapid communication of social networking technology to customize and disseminate requests for support across wider and wider networks. While the change isn't fully hear yet, it seems to many to be a much more authentic and efficient way to ask for help than to send mailers out to anyone who's even thought of giving before and hoping enough come back with a check to make it all worthwhile.

But there's something else going on that those not recently on college campuses might not realize. More and more, the most talented undergraduates - regardless of discipline - are spending their extracurricular efforts on social change work. More and more of them are volunteering, more and more of them are going abroad, and more and more of them are starting or joining entrepreneurial nonprofits and social ventures.

Why is this? Part of it is about access; the increase in study abroad, for example, is a self-reinforcing cycle in which more opportunities create more alumni create more conversations create more demand. But there's something larger going on as well.

Today's young people have grown up with access to more news - and more connectivity to direct on the ground sources - than ever before. We're hungry to actually do, and less and less content to sit on the sidelines (or if you will, Morgan Stanley summer internships). When today's young people are surveying their options for summers, and the options are getting research grants or volunteer positions with international nonprofits doing compelling work, or wearing a suit to get some guy coffee and learning how to jockey Excel spreadsheets, guess what they're choosing?

The implication is not that every one of those people that has that sort of formative experience is going to start or join a social venture. But almost every young person today knows more people with their own nonprofit organizations than people a few years older. It's just the norm.

If and as that trend continues, it's going to make more and more sense to just support the work of people you know. That sort of giving has not only the personal return on investment discussed above, but a social return on investment that is about investing in the good work of your friends. And that's even before you get to the fact that many will be more likely to trust the "outsourcing" of the social return on investment to people they know and in whom they have confidence.

I've already reached a point (and actually been there for a few years) where 100% - or truth be told, a lot more than 100% - of the money that I can give to charitable organizations can go to groups run by friends. While I certainly have more friends in this space than the average person, I'm not as much of an outlier as you might think.

So here's the challenge. Giving to a friend's organization is an extremely compelling giving service. The threshold that any new organization or giving platform that's trying to wrest my dollars - and in the future, the dollars of most people my age - away is to provide an experience that is so compelling that I actually decide to turn down my friends.

That's not an easy task, but it's not impossible. Being a part of something larger even than my friend relationships can still be compelling, as the case was with Hurricane Katrina relief. Giving in a way that hits a target population that my friends can't access - as Kiva does for many - is another way. But those are the stakes.

(Photo: Left to Right: Saul Garlick, a friend and founder of ThinkImpact with one of his Kenyan partners)