The Emergence of Open Source Philanthropy

Stephen Melville, chair of the Melville Charitable Trust and a leader in the movement to end homelessness in America, talks about the Trust’s work in this way: “If we are serious that we mean to put an end to homelessness, then we must play our part in creating a social fact that will exist, and continue to exist wholly independent of us. We must put ourselves out of business, or at least the business we are in.” (The World We Want, p. 108 - If We Are Serious)

Put simply, whether the issue is homelessness, education, arts, environment or poverty, philanthropy can not achieve its goals alone. While access to resources is a large concern, even more critical is the sheer complexity of solving social issues; complex problems can never be solved by a single actor. One emerging solution is a shift in the role and responsibilities of various sectors or an Open Source approach to philanthropy.

In the Open Source world, silos are broken down.  Civil society, government and the market economy work together, harnessing and integrating their resources, “defining problems, creating solutions, and implementing strategies.” (The World We Want, p. 93 – The Building Blocks of Open Philanthropy) Advocates like Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, and Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, call for creating a “new paradigm that bridges business and the social sector.” (The World We Want, p. 29 - Revolution – A World Class Business with a Social Mission) Social investors like Google, with its new $1 billion for-profit social investment fund, espouse the same theme.

Civil society has become a source of innovation and creativity, and the power and influence of the sector is growing. Nonprofit organizations and NGOs are growing in capacity and competence and are now better able to compete and collaborate with business and government. The promotion of the “social entrepeneur,” a term that did not exist 25 years ago, is now widespread. Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka, believes this citizen sector is rapidly closing the business-social productivity gap and creating a radically new hybrid business/social value-added chain (The World We Want, p. 44 – Citizen Jujitsu).

A real time example of this shift is the highly touted $100 laptop computer developed at MIT by the non-profit One Laptop Per Child Foundation. Both Intel Corp and Asus Computer International of Taiwan, major electronics companies, have introduced inexpensive laptops directly competitive to the foundation’s product and are successfully marketing their product to very poor countries. Amazingly, Intel has even been accused of deliberatively selling their product ‘below cost’ (Boston Globe – 10/14/07). Imagine a very poor kid in a village Africa or Asia who could care less whether his remarkable PC link with cyberspace was made by a business or a foundation.

We have entered an era where hybrids of for-profit and nonprofit endeavors will increasingly become important contributors to the resolution of social dilemmas.

Learn more about The World We Want by Peter Karoff