This year's winners at the Crunchies actually surprised a whole bunch of people: Google+ won in the best social application category, Nest beat iPad 2 and Twitter beat a whole lot of other nominees to win in the biggest social impact category (inspiring revolutions, anybody?!). But this debate on-who-should-have-won is not what I want to write about today. In fact, I specifically wanted to highlight the inspiring models that some of the other nominees in the biggest social impact category are pursuing.
Charity: water, the runner-up in this category, had a simple and powerful premise. There are 1 billion people across the planet today without access to clean water. Simply sign-up on the website and donate via credit card. The credit card's company fees and all other operating expenses are sponsored and therefore the donation directly contributes to a water project 100%. Till date, they have funded over 6000 projects impacting over 2 and a half million people, and have raised over $40 million. Charity: water has used technology to make the entire process of fund-raising. allocation and tracking efficient and transparent. For instance, you can track via GPS, every single project that has been given funding towards a water project; you get a report for where your money has gone and very importantly, Charity: water verifies the amount of funding that is actually required by the implementing local partner via technology. For more information on Charity: water see: http://www.charitywater.org
Khan Academy, another nominee, has an equally simple premise. Its website provides one with free micro-lecture and tutorials that have been hosted on Youtube across a wide variety of subjects. You as a teacher, can even sign-up an entire class and track your student's progress to the minutest of detail. This non-profit has significant backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and airs no advertisements on its videos or website. How it uses technology is extremely interesting: it has adaptive learning exercises and generates problems randomly. It has powerful statistical reporting and keeps track of what you have been learning, what you have learnt so far and what you been struggling on so that you can focus on it even more: features that are not available in most traditional classrooms even. For more information on the Khan Academy see: http://www.khanacademy.org
But perhaps, Kickstarter, yet another nominee, sounds the most disruptive of them all. This is an online crowdfunding website for funding projects where donors can directly choose creative projects to fund. The project owners need to ask for a minimum amount of funding and set a date by when the need to raise the funds by. If within this time, the funds aren't raised, then all the money raised in that project is returned to the donors. Also the project owner retains 100% control and ownership of their projects. There is no guarantee that people that post projects will deliver on their projects or even use the money to do their projects and Kickstarter advises sponsors to use their own judgment on supporting projects. However, this model has been working successfully so far and donors get special benefits from the project owners depending on the amount of donation being made. For more information see: http://www.kickstarter.com
For all full list of this year's winners and nominees, see http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/31/crunchies-dropbox/
Charity: water, the runner-up in this category, had a simple and powerful premise. There are 1 billion people across the planet today without access to clean water. Simply sign-up on the website and donate via credit card. The credit card's company fees and all other operating expenses are sponsored and therefore the donation directly contributes to a water project 100%. Till date, they have funded over 6000 projects impacting over 2 and a half million people, and have raised over $40 million. Charity: water has used technology to make the entire process of fund-raising. allocation and tracking efficient and transparent. For instance, you can track via GPS, every single project that has been given funding towards a water project; you get a report for where your money has gone and very importantly, Charity: water verifies the amount of funding that is actually required by the implementing local partner via technology. For more information on Charity: water see: http://www.charitywater.org
Khan Academy, another nominee, has an equally simple premise. Its website provides one with free micro-lecture and tutorials that have been hosted on Youtube across a wide variety of subjects. You as a teacher, can even sign-up an entire class and track your student's progress to the minutest of detail. This non-profit has significant backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and airs no advertisements on its videos or website. How it uses technology is extremely interesting: it has adaptive learning exercises and generates problems randomly. It has powerful statistical reporting and keeps track of what you have been learning, what you have learnt so far and what you been struggling on so that you can focus on it even more: features that are not available in most traditional classrooms even. For more information on the Khan Academy see: http://www.khanacademy.org
But perhaps, Kickstarter, yet another nominee, sounds the most disruptive of them all. This is an online crowdfunding website for funding projects where donors can directly choose creative projects to fund. The project owners need to ask for a minimum amount of funding and set a date by when the need to raise the funds by. If within this time, the funds aren't raised, then all the money raised in that project is returned to the donors. Also the project owner retains 100% control and ownership of their projects. There is no guarantee that people that post projects will deliver on their projects or even use the money to do their projects and Kickstarter advises sponsors to use their own judgment on supporting projects. However, this model has been working successfully so far and donors get special benefits from the project owners depending on the amount of donation being made. For more information see: http://www.kickstarter.com
For all full list of this year's winners and nominees, see http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/31/crunchies-dropbox/
