Edward Norton & Crowdsourcing Philanthropy

Created by DesignCrowd on Thursday, July 15, 2010

Meet Crowdrise (www.crowdrise.com) an online fundraising service that is essentially a charitable crowdfunding site (based on the principles of crowdsourcing).

Crowdrise is genius and, at some level, a very pure form of crowdsourcing. Here's how it works:

If you need to fundraise for something (for say a Gulf Oil Spill clean up effort or a Maasai village that needs a truck) then you can post an initiative on Crowdrise.com and ask strangers from around the world to donate or volunteer. Perhaps more importantly, you can be one of the givers.

See this excellent Crowdrise How it Works page for more info.

What's fascinating about Crowdrise is that Edward Norton (yes that Edward Norton of Fight Club and Hollywood in general) is one of the founders (along with these clever people: Shauna Robertson, Robert Wolfe, Jeffrey Wolfe). If you don't believe me read on (and check out the Crowdrise home page) ...

I asked Edward Norton if he would give me an exclusive 1-on-1 interview re Crowdrise for this blog ...

... unfortunately, I am yet to get a response from Edward and will continue to bad mouth the worst movie ever made (Danny DeVito and Edward Norton's Death to Smoochy) until he gets back to me.

As such, for now, this video of Edward giving an interview to Mashable will have to suffice:

(sidebar: you can follow me on Twitter @aleclynch for more tip-offs re crowdsourcing and unwelcome celebrity heckling)

In closing we think Crowdrise is the future of fundraising. It completely changes the dynamic of fundraising. Instead of 1 charity (say The Red Cross) spending money on TV ads and getting you to donate, Crowdrise puts more faith in people and says "here's a good cause, go fundraise from your friends". This model could genuinely drive more charitable activity in the world through a a very positive form of peer pressure. It does not replace the old model, but it is more efficient and works alongside it. It is analogous to President Obama's 'grassroots' approach to the last election. Getting back to Crowdrise, I honestly think this is one of the most positive and innovative crowdsourcing applications going around. Not since Ashton Kutcher's pioneering use of Twitter have I been so impressed by the savviness of someone from Hollywood.

If you're still unsure about the merits of Crowdrise then perhaps this excerpt from Bill Clinton's book Giving will help: