ChangingThePresent.org -- new developments
Ruth
Robert Talmach, president of WellGood LLC, contacted me this past
week. They're the company that created ChangingThePresent.org! The
staff pedigree impressive (e.g., CTO Bruce Tate has written a number
of books on Java and Ruby), and Robert tells me that what we see on
www.ChangingThePresent.org is but 3% of what they have planned for
ChangingThePresent. And it is already amazing!
They are on a mission to create the portal for donations for non-
profits, and see donations of goods fitting into this picture. Bruce
Tate has a post titled "Ruby on Rails Case Study:
ChangingThePresent.org" on InfoQ, providing some insight into what has
been done so far, and insight into the WellGood/ChangingThePresent
vision. (See http://www.infoq.com/articles/changing-the-present-case-stud.)
I'll be meeting with Robert and Bruce by phone as soon as possible to
better understand if ChangingThePresent is something we should plug in
to.
It's an interesting situation:
-- They have an angle (refocusing gift spending on charitable giving)
that creates a particular kind of identity.
-- I think WellGood LLC is a for-profit business, but don't know how
they generate revenue from www.changingthepresent.org.
-- I have no idea yet how willing they'd be to open the architecture
to enable lots of volunteer contribution.
-- I don't know if/how the goods donations are going to fit under the
"changing the gift" identity/branding.
I have lots of questions! I'm sure you do too. We can try to make this
a conference call with Robert and Bruce and other HelpMatchers if
there is a sense that would be the right thing to do. Just let me
know; at a minimum, send me any questions you'd like to have answered
by Robert and Bruce.
We need to understand WellGood's plans for www.changingthepresent.org
better, so we can assess options for HelpMatch:
-- do we declare the problem well-enough addressed by WellGood and go
away quietly, leaving them with an uncomplicated space to play out
their good intentions for www.changingthepresent.org?
-- do we figure out how to help WellGood accomplish their objectives
for www.changingthepresent.org, and ... do they want that?
-- does HelpMatch has a value proposition that goes beyond that of
www.changingthepresent.org and do we need to focus there?
Thanks again Udi (and Rishi) for bringing www.changingthepresent.org
to our attention. We'll see where this goes.
There's another open source effort to put on the radar:
http://www.christmasfuture.org/
At any rate, interesting times! There is so much going on in the
"help" industry, with books coming out every day it seems. The problem
is big, but the attention is very encouraging.
Best regards,
Ruth Malan
Ruth
At the end of April, I met by phone with Robert Tolmach and Bruce Tate
of WellGood, creators of ChangingThePresent.org. It was great! So
great, it took me more than a month to get my breath back!
They're smart people, headed in a good, right direction. Robert
Tolmach has a tremendous grasp of the non-profit space. Bruce Tate is
not just technically adept, but he understands how to get great
software created-quickly.
Their value proposition overlaps with a good part of what we were
envisioning for HelpMatch as a port of call for help. The WellGood
team is brilliant, and they're full-time focused on
ChangingThePresent.org-it's their day-job. WellGood is a for-profit-
the best of free-enterprise partnering with the best of deep human
goodness. Even if it was a good idea to compete with that, it would be
hard to. But the deeper question is, should we?
WellGood suggested a partnership of sorts, where HelpMatchers would
create the used goods/needs matching engine and WellGood would
integrate this as a service into what ChangingThePresent.org offers.
But Tolmach and Tate clearly don't see this service as terribly
compelling (frankly, if they did, they'd build it themselves for that
would be quicker and easier to manage). The issue they see, is in
distribution logistics. Shipping one item at a time, as selected from
a virtual inventory of donations, is massively uneconomical and
inefficient. This is absolutely right.
ChangingThePresent.org raises funds for charities. WellGood also see
themselves adding used goods to that, but focused on charities-like
collecting used eye-glasses for Lions, who redistributes them in
impoverished countries. In his head, Tolmach has numbers like: 15% of
used clothing gets redistributed; the rest ends in landfills. 2.5B
people need eyeglasses; America retires 90M glasses (sunglasses,
reading glasses, etc.) to landfills each year; only 2.5% of these are
diverted from the waste stream. These are small, light and non-
perishable. In other words, the redistribution costs are small
relative to the value.
As I said, Tolmach is impressive. He has relationships built across
the non-profit space. He thoroughly knows their business. Tate clearly
likes and deeply respects him. I can see why. For his part, Tate is
sharp but pragmatic. A guy to get things done-right.
Yes, the WellGood team are good in every sense. The quandary the
meeting produced for me, set me at a low ebb on HelpMatch energy. I
had to convince myself that HelpMatch filled a distinct and compelling
need from ChangingThePresent, before I could return to begging for
bandwidth from my architecture friends!
But the germ of the HelpMatch idea was to find a family like mine
impacted by Katrina-matching at a higher level of granularity than at
the item level. I think that is still a compelling idea. I believe
there is still an unfilled need:
-- ChangingThePresent is focused on helping institutions/non-profits;
helping people find non-profits to help, and channeling funds and
goods to non-profits. This is an important mission.
-- The HelpMatch vision is centered on people, rather than
institutions. I think that is the differentiator to focus on, as we
build out the value propositions for HelpMatch. How do we help people
help people? How do we connect people, facilitate information flow,
facilitate relationships and leverage trust to help people in need.
It is not the same thing as what WellGood is doing with
ChangingThePresent. It does overlap--if we create tools for people to
create ad hoc help projects with Web 2.0ish community support, those
tools can be used to support formal help drives, like fund raising
drives for non-profits registered in ChangingThePresent. But the focus
is different, so the end result will be flavored quite differently.
After the fact, the distinction seems obvious.
In the end, perhaps the right thing to do is to partner with
ChangingThePresent, and help them expand their reach to disaster
assistance through informal people-centered channels rather than just
through institutional non-profits. But in the beginning, I think that
is not the right focus. I think the right focus is to figure out what
HelpMatch needs to be, to support people helping people, making the
connections, leveraging their personal networks and extended networks,
to meet needs of people impacted by disaster (acute), or by poverty,
war, etc. (chronic).
What do you think?
Best regards,
Ruth
Craig
At this point, I tend to support your conclusion ...
> In the end, perhaps the right thing to do is to partner with
> ChangingThePresent, and help them expand their reach to disaster
> assistance through informal people-centered channels rather than just
> through institutional non-profits. But in the beginning, I think that
> is not the right focus. I think the right focus is to figure out what
> HelpMatch needs to be, to support people helping people, making the
> connections, leveraging their personal networks and extended networks,
> to meet needs of people impacted by disaster (acute), or by poverty,
> war, etc. (chronic).
Shouldn't we "test" to see if we have the right focus figured out when
we think we do? We could build a prototype or proof-of-concept to
test our "focus". None of which would have to be mutually exclusive
of partnering with ChangingThePresent. We wouldn't necessarily be
closing any doors while working towards our focus (no more quotations
marks).
I'm curious to hear other remarks.
Regards,
- Craig.
Ruth Malan at Bredemeyer Consulting
I think I found a "HelpMatch" -- it is called GiveMeaning. It is a nice site
to see "help projects" and it has many of the aspects I was envisioning!
Still, it only works through registered non-profits. It doesn't address the
Katrina scenario.
And ... when I look at the $donations versus the list of friends, there's
more friends than money flowing...
Best regards,
Ruth