As reported in this article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, has announced that he will be launching a new website this coming fall with the purpose of helping people connect with nonprofits and causes that resonate with them. “Jumo—which means ‘together in concert’ in Yoruba, a West African language—will be designed to take advantage of content that has already been created elsewhere and offer robust tools for sharing content, says Mr. Hughes. ‘The last thing I want to do is add yet another site to a nonprofit’s plate,’ he says. ‘I don’t want them to have to go to yet another destination to share who they are and the work that they’re doing.’” Jumo has been registered as a nonprofit and is in the process of applying for tax-exempt status from the IRS, while also working to raise over $2 million. The Jumo concept has secured $500,000 through individual donations and is seeking grants from the likes of Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
Our Fundraising Sector Team has discussed the evolving but still fragmented world of online giving. The Jumo website plans to not only aggregate causes, but also track, analyze, and aggregate donor perspectives (gathered through a variety of questions posed on the site), which can then be used to steer donors to causes that will resonate the most with them. These purposed methods would take the current donor aggregator and cause platform models one step further. However, a few of many questions that arise are:
- Will a separate website draw a critical number of more interested and motivated viewers to offset the benefit of sharing nonprofit/cause postings on Facebook, where there are many more albeit often less motivated viewers?
- What will be the vetting process before allowing nonprofits, causes, and volunteer and advocacy opportunities to be posted on the website?
No comments:
Post a Comment