The joy of e-giving

ONE of the more unpredictable events each year at Davos is the Philanthropy Rountable hosted by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Last year Damien Hurst had the audience of movers and shakers messily doing art. This year Chelsea Clinton—here in loco parentis—moderated a discussion on e-philanthropy, featuring Eric Schmidt of Google; Sean Parker of Napster, Facebook and The Social Network; Yuri Milner, a Russian internet investor; and Alec Ross, who oversees technology for America's State Department.

Advertised, but sadly absent, was Tony Blair, apparently "stuck in the Middle East"—hopefully doing something constructive. What he would have added to the discussion is unclear, as even his own wife publicly describes him as "useless" with technology. When Katie Couric, an American news anchor, once asked him, "do you Tweet?" he replied, "Never intentionally."

Still Mr Blair presumably has some familiarity with the role of Twitter and Facebook in last year's Arab Spring, which might have prompted him (unlike Ms Clinton) to ask Mr Milner what he is doing to help bring about a Russian Spring, and Mr Ross what the US State Dept had learned from last year about how technology could be used to thwart Vladimir Putin's attempt to resume the presidency of Russia.

You might think this all hass little to do with philanthropy, but all of the panelists saw e-philanthropy in broad terms as the way tech can be applied to bring about social change. Mr Parker spoke about his "quarrel" with traditional philanthropy, and questioned with tax-advantaged non-profits are really the best vehicle society has to advance social change. He did not believe that a non-profit would be able to develop the technological tools necessary to create efficient social movements, which is why he structured his do-gooding social network organisation, Causes, as a for-profit.

Alas, he was not asked why Causes has failed to live up to the early hype that it would transform fundraising for non-profits by making giving and building support for a cause easy. He implicitly acknowledged this slow progress, with phrases such as "early days" and admitting that relatively little money has been raised so far via Causes. One problem, he suggested, is that most non-profits are incapable of making good use of the latest technology and the data it produces. After starting out aiming to get all of America's million-plus non-profits connected, he says Causes will now focus on 10,000 or so he says are sufficiently tech savvy. Will this targeted apprpoach deliver better results?

Mr Schmidt was at his most interesting on the subject of the next generation of Silicon Valley rich, who he says are more concerned about society's problems and much more generous than his own Baby Boom generation. The "one percent rule", whereby a firm gives away 1% of annual profits, 1% of its equity and 1% of its employees' time, pioneered by Salesforce.com and adopted by Google, is now the norm for Silicon Valley start-ups, said Mr Schmidt. Alas, he was not asked what went wrong with Google.org, which was launched with much fanfare as the future of corporate philanthropy, but has since sunk almost without trace.

Mr Schmidt predicts that the mobile phone will be the most philanthropic (in the broadest sense) of all the new technologies, especially once its cost in the developing world falls to around $70. One of the striking things about mobile telephony is that it is already delivering huge social benefits even though it is largely commercially driven, rather than relying on charitable donations or government aid.

Mr Ross agreed, highlighting how money had been raised cheaply by text to help in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. He talked excitedly about the benefits of a mobile app that has been developed to let Masai warriors more effectively monitor the menstrual cycles of dairy cows, and thereby greatly increase their productivity. As he rightly pointed out, this is not something that would ever be thought of by government or "in Davos".

Perhaps the most interesting new idea came from the audience where, this being Davos, sat Tim Berners Lee. The inventor of the internet suggested a radical approach to improving the effectiveness of philanthropy through extreme charity: it should become a routine activity, he suggested, that anyone receiving a donation should publish in cyberspace exactly what they do with it, all the way along the line until the money reaches its ultimate charitable destination. Now, wouldn't that be an e-philanthropy game changer?

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