raising a cow - bootstrapping a nomadfund
Amateur Philanthropy
Let's invest directly in humanity. Instead of donating to just charities, let's create a distributed global micro investment funds that funnel money directly to people that can benefits from it.
We have people on the ground everywhere in the world that can find opportunities to micro invests in micro businesses or farms. There will be no intermediary; it's just us, nomads and the recipients.
There is no need for centralized decision making. You or a group you belong to can decide to invest in certain micro businesses or opportunities that other nomads found around the world. We will then track the progress of the investment publicly here in nomadlife. We can limit to the amount of investment in each venture to max 500 dollars and as little as 100.
We can support micro farms to be independent by providing funds for equipments or livestocks (buy cows). We can provide scholarships for kids to finish their primary education so that they don't have to drop out. We can purchase manual water pumps to irigate micro farms.
And we will set up invididualized benchmarks and success criteria for each investment (not donation).
Essentially we have three components in this investments funds.
1. Investors. These are nomads that provides the money.
2. Tracker. These are nomads that help track the progress of the investment.
3. On the ground. These are nomads that are on the ground that evaluate and spot investment opportunities.
We start small and use the benefits of time to learn the inticracies and challenges in working this way but I think the potential benefits are great.
This way we can link the younger generations who has the time, with the older generation who has the money to work together in directly solving worlds problem. This way we can learn on philantrophy since the beginning. This way we all can stay involved and contribute directly to humanity.
And all of these will done on part time and voluntary basis; in short, amateurs.
This is in essence how the dark side operates btw. Global terrorism and international black market operate in decentralized ways solely based on trust (because they are outside legal protection) and fear. Funds are funelled mainly through individuals or small groups instead of institutions for direct operations.
There is no light side network that utilize this principle (without the fear part) that I know of so there is no playbook for us available to use. Well, that means we will get to write one. Fun.
Let's invest directly in humanity. Instead of donating to just charities, let's create a distributed global micro investment funds that funnel money directly to people that can benefits from it.
We have people on the ground everywhere in the world that can find opportunities to micro invests in micro businesses or farms. There will be no intermediary; it's just us, nomads and the recipients.
There is no need for centralized decision making. You or a group you belong to can decide to invest in certain micro businesses or opportunities that other nomads found around the world. We will then track the progress of the investment publicly here in nomadlife. We can limit to the amount of investment in each venture to max 500 dollars and as little as 100.
We can support micro farms to be independent by providing funds for equipments or livestocks (buy cows). We can provide scholarships for kids to finish their primary education so that they don't have to drop out. We can purchase manual water pumps to irigate micro farms.
And we will set up invididualized benchmarks and success criteria for each investment (not donation).
Essentially we have three components in this investments funds.
1. Investors. These are nomads that provides the money.
2. Tracker. These are nomads that help track the progress of the investment.
3. On the ground. These are nomads that are on the ground that evaluate and spot investment opportunities.
We start small and use the benefits of time to learn the inticracies and challenges in working this way but I think the potential benefits are great.
This way we can link the younger generations who has the time, with the older generation who has the money to work together in directly solving worlds problem. This way we can learn on philantrophy since the beginning. This way we all can stay involved and contribute directly to humanity.
And all of these will done on part time and voluntary basis; in short, amateurs.
This is in essence how the dark side operates btw. Global terrorism and international black market operate in decentralized ways solely based on trust (because they are outside legal protection) and fear. Funds are funelled mainly through individuals or small groups instead of institutions for direct operations.
There is no light side network that utilize this principle (without the fear part) that I know of so there is no playbook for us available to use. Well, that means we will get to write one. Fun.
posted by Dody G. at 7:15 PM
16 Comments:
First donation should be to the Republican National Committee. ;)
10:03 PM
I like the way you think, Dody.
So... any nomads on the ground in developing regions who want to make suggestions on where the fund should be sent?
Inform us. Educate us. Let's work together.
10:36 PM
I live and work in NGO world in Indonesia so I think somehow I know how it can be work. let me know what I can help for this.
11:13 PM
If we can get enough people interested and get this going, especially the funds side, this could be another revolution. I think it has great potential Dody.
I live & work in Bangalore, India. Apart from my regular job I also moonlight with a network of NGOs here that are looking to provide destitute/underpriveleged kids with access to education & vocational training. I can be a tracker & an "on the ground" person.
Just for interest's sake, the cost of putting one kid through the entire program we run here in Bangalore is around $150 USD per year per kid!
I'm sold.
abhi.nomadlife.org
9:11 AM
got good idea from abhi, I have networking also with school around poor area..I'll search about their needs later. if somebody have interest feel free contact me at dianadi.prasetyo@gmail.com
but as my first opinion for the stident at public schools 100US$/year/kid is enough but I'll search then and let u know the progress.
dod, I declare ready to help "on the ground" :)
didut@nomadlife.org
3:17 PM
Kids education is definately worth pursuing. Another crucial part would be to find micro businesses that can benefit an investment.
What we should do is to pair up micro business investments with kids scholarships.
We invest in the business (meaning we will expect profit and return payment) and use the monthly payment to directly fund the local kids education.
This way we are investing both in the current situation (with immediate impact) and future generation at the same time.
3:22 PM
With pairings, we can build a sustainable relationship between micro businesses and its direct environment, instead of just direct foreign aid intervention.
So we are giving the micro businesses a fighting chance to survive and grow and ask the businesses to give the kids the same chance and opportunity.
And this way, we will create a local relationship in the scholarship which strengthen community and enable the people in the community to take care of their own.
And we can cut dependency on foreign money for some of these programs.
3:30 PM
We can call this arrangement
"cash cow" and the "scholars" pairings :)
3:44 PM
I really support this idea as well. I was watching this documentary last night entitled "16 decisions" and it really drove home Dody's point:
"In Bangladesh, it's not uncommon for girls to be child laborers at seven, married at 12 and destitute when their own children marry. Filmmaker Gayle Ferraro documents an astounding feminist revolution currently in progress, which aims to reverse this cycle of despair. With micro-loans averaging only $60 and dedication to a code of 16 life decisions, a visionary, socially conscious bank and a new generation of women are offering inspiration and hope for the generations to come"
The doc. was talking about how many of these woman couldn't get loans for even one dollar. ONE DOLLAR, PEOPLE!! So, with $60 dollar loans, This guy starts a business. A small one. And he is changing the world. That's one person. In one country. Imagine the power of all of us?
3:49 PM
Count me in fellas, I have been thinking for quite some time of ways to utilize my network into supporting real changing initiatives, and I agree with dody's approach to it: Fund local businesses and expect that return to fund local initiatives, it would could build long lasting bonds between micro businesses and local needs.
One idea that came up with some time ago, was partnering with micro businesses which made products which we could help by selling in our home countries and send the collected funds back to the business (or local communities). It's a longer and harder path, but just imagine working with some handcrafter and selling their work to your co-workers or local network, and positioning the products based on the impact it will have on this communities or children's lives.
Anyways, let's just start small and then grow.
10:24 PM
i think i can help. i live in cameroon and will stay for another two years. i will have contact with int'l NGO's and most importantly will befriend many farmers and school children. i will look into prices of cows. they vary widely. things such as grinding machines for corn and cassava (this is a good business for those who have it and sell its grinding power), equipment to help farmers work more quickly, used computer for a business to track their finances, etc.
4:20 PM
Cool,
keep us up to date. Johny is working on 'raise a cow' campaign to fundraise our first cow
8:08 PM
Interesting, all of what you've just said I do through work, my NGO does HEAPS of Microenterprise Development and also works with kids etc. I could expand here but am weary of putting too much of what I know, plus we work in a very formalised way, another idea I can suggest is trust banks. We do it as a way to link groups of donors in countries such as NZ with groups of entrepreneurs in small countries. I'll put up some more information soon if anyone's interested, we could learn from it. I'd like to help and be a real part of this...
Only thing we need to be wary of is making everything too formal. How structured do we want it? The idea of twinning business groups and scholars could become complicated...would need to find a simple way of doing it.
One suggestion I already have is the Tsunami regions. From people on the ground who have been there it seems that a lot is being done in the big picture but little things still need to be attended to. A guy came in to see us the other day, he had been a volunteer for Greenpeace in Aceh and decided to spend some more time there when GP left. He found a school/orphange which had not receibed any help as yet, and decided to make it his personal campaign to raise funds for them and came back to NZ with bank account details for each kid.
Another thing - how will the funds be channelled? Need to be careful about what NGO you will be funding as a huge % are not legit.
Anyway, its a cool idea, starting small:) I like it.
2:32 AM
Dody!
What an awesome idea!!
Would it be like a portfolio of investment opportunities basically?
And each tracker would kind of be an investment manager?
Also, in the context of linking the investments with say scholarships, what do you mean by we "use the monthly payment to directly fund the local kids education." What monthly payment are you referring to? Interest payments?
3:30 AM
dody
cool idea. I am not a fan of donating a cow though: i think investing in a business is a much better idea since it will hopefully create jobs, and creating jobs should be the goal of all charity.
Of couse, creating people suitable to work in the jobs and giving them the skills to work is important too-so i support the education initative. But I think education should not be the primary driver sur to longer term investment required and complex tracking needed. It also brings in a big 'human element' -requiring trust.
Longer term I can definitely see this taking off since lots of foundations are donating towards these kinds of things.. the idea of an open source, open accountability system has been needed in our society for a long time.
One other suggestion is to use a network to also link up volunteers. To get others involved in helping us; for those without a job they can go looking for investment opportunities safe in the knowledge that if they find one we will support it. A way to encourage entrepreneurship. Something similar to Youth Business International (and IBLF) thing that also provides entrepreneurs with funds and mentoring from managers, but its net is too closed, its impact too limited. We can work with that model as well.
what do you think?
2:26 AM
Good idea but the cost of sustaining multiple businesses for job creation is harder to do.
I'd say we'll start by sending a couple of kids to school with some sort of business model, learn the mechanics and expand it to job creation initiative.
The learning factor is important in this type of Amateur Philantrhopist. There are so many Experts out there specializing in this field. We will have to do something different, interesting and useful.
6:06 PM
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home