Southeastern Council of Foundations

As a communications professional, I was in awe of Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency. He reached through the Internet and tapped the passion of thousands of people who had felt disenfranchised by the political system. He mobilized them and created a dramatic shift in the way politicians now view the public. 

To my way of thinking, that was a resurgence of true democracy: one person, one vote, re-engaged via social media. Not everyone liked it, of course, because it did tip the balance of power and shake up the status quo.

That said, it calls into question the value of evaluating and mobilizing popular will versus taking a more studied and strategic approach to creating change.

Now, I see this same question coming from inside the philanthropic sector. It started with Facebook's "causes" pages and other social media outlets, where like-minded individuals could rally around shared concerns, pool donations, get engaged as volunteers. But earlier this week, FastCompany posted an article about the new Chase Community Giving Program, a collaboration between Chase and Facebook that will allow users to vote on how Chase will spend $4 million from its corporate philanthropy fund. There are 500,000 charities in the running.

According to the article, "The charity receiving the most votes will receive $1 million, the top 5 runners up will get $100,000 each, and 100 finalists will get $25,000 each. It's all money that Chase would give to charities anyway, but this is the first time that the bank  is crowdsourcing its decisions."

"Crowdsourcing," or abdicating? 

To say I have mixed feelings about this is an understatement. 

On one hand, I'm excited that hundreds of thousands of Facebook users might engage in thoughts of philanthropy, learn about what different nonprofits are doing, and hopefully ignite a personal spark of giving and engagement that will pervade their behavior going forward and result in an even more generous society going forward. I recently heard Aaron Dorfman of the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy cite studies showing that the wisdom of a semi-educated crowd often resulted in better decisions than a homogeneous panel of "experts." That could be true, depending on your definition of "better decisions."

On the other hand, there's the danger that the "winners" in this type of contest are the nonprofits with the best social media engines, not the best or most effective programs. As nonprofits and foundations increasingly come under attack for not doing enough, popular support could be a tempting way to fend off proposed charity or foundation legislation or negative press. I worry that strategic philanthropy could go the way of politics — where popular support at all costs becomes the prize, rather than actually creating a positive impact. Support will come at the expense of doing the more difficult work of demonstrating true effectiveness.

That leads to a point about corporate social responsibility. Are the leaders of Chase's corporate giving just going to become keyboard jockeys? Have they all been laid off? Is crowdsourcing Chase's new attempt at free outsourcing? Or is it just a way to avoid making some tough decisions?

The blog Modern Giving examined a few of the pros and cons of crowd sourcing in July, including a description of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Knight News Challenge as an example. (To me, the News Challenge was a great example of crowdsourcing ideas in a more defined and effective way.)

Don't get me wrong: I believe that crowdsourcing is here to stay. I also believe that it may prove to be an effective tool for raising awareness and potentially creating positive change. 

But I also think it won't make the difficult task of explaining the work and the value of private foundations, family foundations, community foundations or corporate philanthropy any easier. 

What to YOU think?