Why MEOG Matters:

In a recent New York Times article, Study Shows First-Time Online Donors Often Do Not Return, a study by Target Analytics was reviewed that is very pertinent to the MEOG project. You can download the full study at: donorCentrics™ Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis.

The message of the study was clear: the traditionally untapped online donor market has become an increasingly important revenue stream for charities and the demographics of online donors in general are preferable to "offline" donors (i.e., mail-in donors).

Online revenue as a percentage of total revenue for the 24 organization participants is still dwarfed by the traditional offline donation streams (roughly 10% of total revenue came from online donations in 2008), but has become increasingly important. The median online donations grew 39% from 2007 to 2008 versus a -3% growth rate for offline donors in the same period (Target Analytics).

According to the study, the average online donor is younger, more educated, makes more money and donates in higher amounts--all very attractive characteristics for potential donors. “But how you get people to routinely give online is a nut no one has yet cracked.” ~ Tobias Smith, director of online communications at CARE (NYT.com). Yes, it has proven challenging for charities to get online donors to come back and donate again, and those who do tend to migrate to offline donation avenues (i.e., mail).

There are any number of reasons why online donations are such a small portion of overall revenue, but most importantly the online market is relatively new and not well known by organizations. “We know how to ask for money using the mail, but most organizations are still trying to figure out how to do that online.” ~Lori Held, membership marketing director at Trout Unlimited (NYT.com). Paper costs and check processing is expensive, but it is a market that has evolved over decades and charities have gotten very good at it. During a time when donations are hard to come by, it is difficult to justify investing in new fundraising mediums that would require new staff and studies needed to perfect online marketing strategies.


This is where MEOG comes in. The genius of MEOG has never been contained in any one of the many services we propose to offer. In fact, many of our services are already being done in one form or another by other websites (See: networkforgood.org for online donations, idealist.org for volunteer opportunities, care2.org for social networking, oneworld.net for news in the development community, and choike.org for news and attention paid to non-Western charities). To the contrary, the beauty of MEOG lies in the effects of what happens when you bring all of these services into one easy-to-use public space online.

For example, one problem that organizations face when recruiting online donors is the need to hire expensive staff who understand how to corner the online market. But by appealing to potential donors through the establishment of a social networking website, MEOG essentially brings socially conscious people to organizations' doorsteps. By marketing ourselves we also market our organization members.

The article cites online donor retention as a major problem, and this view may prevent further investment in online fundraising campaigns. We at MEOG, believe in creating a multitude of benefits to the user that keep them coming back, ideally for a redundancy of reasons. Some join wanting to learn more about a particular social cause, others for potential volunteer opportunities, still others to find a specific organization's contact information, but each stays to keep in touch with friends they met while volunteering, to stay abreast of the latest development news, and/or to manage the newsletters of all the organizations they are fans of, etc, etc, etc. The point being that MEOG makes it a priority that everyone has a reason to come back.

What does this mean for our organization members? It means being able to target a self-selected group of potential donors, volunteers and potential employees who, through their participation on the site, have identified the issues they are interested in and basically said "I'm here, I'm interested, I want to help." The responsibility of an average organization administrator is simply to present their operation in a positive light and use the marketing features on MEOG to the best of his or her abilities. This will allow organizations who cannot afford big online ad-campaigns to tap into online donations just as easily as big, well-funded charities. Using the tools MEOG provides, charities have incentive to keep their information, accurate, enticing, and up to date, thus leading to the most comprehensive database of organizations that are engaged with their donors, volunteers, constituents and the international development community as a whole.

Let's take a particular site and analyze their model. Networkforgood.org is a very respected online donation interface. They have raised more than $250 million in online tax deductible donations to more than 45,000 U.S. charities. However, they only target charities that have a 501c3 tax designation, thus alienating any non-US organization from receiving donations. Furthermore, they charge a listing fee to be represented on their site, but not every organization can afford, even small, monthly fees. They admittedly keep donation processing fees low (4.75% per donation), but I would prefer to not alienate small charities who cannot afford the listing fee ($199 set up cost and $29.95 a month). In the end, 10% is the same to every donor but 30 bucks a month is not the same to every charity. Any organizations has to cover its administrative fees, but there are varying philosophies on how best to do that. I'd prefer to structure MEOG as to what's best for development, not what looks best at first glance to a donor.

Networkforgood.org has the tax-deductible donation market pretty much cornered in the US at this point. They also make a valid attempt at hooking up volunteers with their organizations, but that part of their site is underused and once again concentrated to organizations registered as 501c3's in the US. I've spoken with hundreds of volunteers or travelers who said they have been frustrated with current sites that claim they hook you up with programs, because there's usually hidden fees or the information is cumbersome and difficult to wield just using Google.

By bringing the donation and volunteer services that networkforgood.org offers into a social networking format and extending organization representation to an international setting, several problems are resolved. First of all, retention rates of donors and volunteers would be dramatically higher. In order to use networkforgood.org you have to first find it and then understand what it does/how to use it. It is often unlikely that a casual site visitor (or even a one-time donor/volunteer) will remember this particular site among the hundreds of sites an average internet user frequents in the course of a month. In other words, the nature of using Network for Good does not encourage return use, in that an average websurfer is minimally engaged at best. By creating user accounts and appealing to a niche market on multiple levels, MEOG can reshape the tap into the social networking craze that has been ballooning in the past 5 years and reshape the way that the international development community interacts with itself.

Once a user account has been created, donor/volunteer retention will dramatically increase. If a user is an active participant on the site, then MEOG will be able to regularly communicate with him or her via private email, keeping them up to speed to changes to their account, thus serving as a constant reminder of our many services and encouraging users to remain engaged with their personal accounts, the MEOG community and international development as a whole. An active MEOG participant is much more likely to continue to donate, comment, volunteer than someone who finds Network for Good in a Google search results page for "donate" or "volunteer".

It is worth noting that while MEOG would dramatically improve the way that online donations are transacted, that is just one on a long list of goals we have. It is widely known that a problem does not go away just by throwing money at it. This is why increased donation levels alone will not erradicate the many problems the international development community is dedicated to fighting. Increases in donation levels need to be matched with increases in human effort (volunteers) and increases in organizational efficiency, which can only be achieved by fostering new conversations and providing some checks on current inefficient behavior.

MEOG accomplishes these things by generating an online public space that facilitates interagency communication, collaboration, and exchange of ideas and resources. By making it easier for organizations to work together you make it more likely that they will benefit from each other's comparative advantage and particular expertise. In short, any social networking website encourages communication and efficient practices that are not currently possible or are not happening with enough frequency. Such a format will also lead to increased organizational transparency with the public at large, which in turn contributes to potential donors and volunteers' confidence in an organization's legitamacy. With increased confidence it is more likely that people actually donate/volunteer--and thus the cycle completes itself.

We are not claiming that MEOG single-handedly changes the world, but it is not unrealistic to suspect that by changing how the disparate parts of the international development community interacts, you can make the whole more effective. Facebook.com has already changed the way that people stay in touch and interact with their network of friends and acquaintances, yet the full extent and power of that change has yet to be fully realized. There is no reason to presume why such an approach to interconnecting the international development community wouldn't have a similarly profound impact on our ability as a species to effectively address the problems that we face.

~Justin Podbielski
--
Director: Many Efforts, One Goal (MEOG)
justin@manyefforts.com
www.manyefforts.com

Lago de Atitlan...the most popular “remote” destination in Guatemala

Greetings and Salutations,

After spending more than a month in Antigua, Maura and I felt the need to move on to the next city, make some new contacts and expand our base of organizations. Deciding that Xela (Quetzaltenango for short) was our next step, we departed the day our rent ran out on our Antigua apartment and passed a few days in Panajachel before arriving at our new base. (more on Xela later...)

Overtaken by foreigners in the seventies, Panajachel is a tourist-run, resort-like city resting on the beautiful Lago de Atitlan. The lake is sandwiched among three awe-inspiring volcanoes and the surface of the water is at an altitude of about 7,000 ft (that's higher than Denver in case you were wondering :) While it feels like you could skip a stone clear across the deep blue water, the lake is about 15 miles across and it takes more than 30 minutes by water taxi to get from one end to the other. Atitlan's remote sleepy villages cling to the steep slopes of the bowl-like mountains that encompass the lake.

Sitting on the shore at night and gazing from one tiny cluster of houses to the next, one wonders how/if the villagers ever get to the outside world, as they could not be more remote if they were tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific. Despite this illusion of isolation, each day hoards of Mayan women (garbed in their traditional traje) walk the streets of these newly formed Gringotenangos and pull beautiful handmade crafts from baskets balanced atop their heads for hundreds of tourists to turn their noses up at while eating their desayunos tipicos.

While visiting the now hippie-dominated waterfront village of San Pedro, we saw the remnants of a life before “Lonely Planet” guidebooks directed flocks of tourists to secret adventures and Nalgene water bottles became a permanent accessory to the world traveler. After a short hike to a cliff perched over the coast below, we watched the local Tzutzujil population and the lake come to life.

The shore was filled with children swimming, men fishing, several people washing away the dirt of the fields with bars of Irish Springs, and half-a-dozen local mujeres standing waste high in the water doing the morning laundry. Roughly 15 stone washboards were somehow secured in the water for this purpose, and it was quite an experience to pretend for a moment that our presence was not an intrusion but rather a window into a culture whose daily lives have revolved around this lake for as many years as the lake is meters high. The only reminder of the time in which we now live was to the see the Doritos bags and Coke bottles rattling against the rocky shore.



In short, Atitlan is a beautiful place, ruined only by the tourists (just like us :) that pollute the water and the local culture with their presence. It is easy to forget that the presence of tourism, while corrupting an ancient way of life, brings many positive side-effects, it being the main source of income in the region.

Reconciling the tradeoff between cultural and environmental preservation with finding opportunities for development in the face of abject poverty is an issue that has given us much to ponder. While the road to hell may be paved with good intentions, it seems plausible that an educated, cautious optimism and a humble approach can lead to those same good intentions leading to more desirable outcomes. What remains to be seen is how far the aforementioned tradeoff reaches, and what sacrifices must be made to achieve that greater purpose. As with most things in life, tradeoffs are unavoidable and any action results in both positive and negative side-effects. Although--not to downplay the severity of the irretrievable losses that change brings with it--a negative result does not imply a balance cannot be found, or that one should stop trying to find it, as life and development is about striving to find that elusive equilibrium which does more good than harm...(can you tell I'm an Economics student yet? :)


Estoy Pensando,

Justin

Oh Monterrico...[UPDATED]

[Update 6:00 pm GMT]
Buenas!

As we said in our last post, after Esquintla we made our way to Monterrico--a beautiful black sand beach on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. Monterrico and the surrounding pueblos are famous for their sea turtle conservatories and we were hoping to mix a little business with a lot of pleasure for the weekend.

The two hour ride to Monterrico took about 6 hours via Chicken Bus and was our first time venturing to the coast. We are used to the cooler climate of the mountains and the combination of mosquitos nets and muggy weather made for sweaty sleeping. The hustle-bustle of the hostel was pretty consistent at all hours of the night and the thunderstorms blotted out our view of the sunset. The first day we awoke early to enjoy the sunny weather and the 9 foot waves. The novelty of the black sand wears off at about 11 am when the scorching sun makes it too hot to walk on the beach without sandals and a bag of ice.

Having earned a pretty bad sun burn despite the obscene amount of sunscreen we were wearing and seeing as the waves were too high to go swimming, we spent our day drinking pina coladas, reading in hammocks and watching the locals walk by.

All in all, it was great to get out of the city, and to see the amazing cultural, geographical and bio diversity that Guatemala has to offer. Guatemala truly is un gran pais en un pequeno lugar. However, the magnificence of this beautiful beach lies in stark contrast with the local poverty, and even the tourist industry (which is one of few in the region) is far from thriving. We sat in awe contemplating how privileged we were to even be here and how much different our own life experiences could have been.

The bus ride reminded us what an opportunity we've been given to see the full range of human experience. Daydreaming about living in this sleepy little want-to-be tourist town made us realize how the world can really be as big or as small as you want it to be. Between the cheap prices, the thatched roofs, the palm trees and the fact that there was only one ATM (which was not working :) within a 50 mile radius, we got a new perspective on living and traveling in a developing country. Having gotten the information we traveled there to collect, no money for food, and coming within 50 yards of being mugged the night before, we decided to shorten our trip and travel back to Antigua the next day. Yet, looking back, our concerns over not having enough money to make it through the weekend seem ridiculous given the fact that the cash we did have left was probably more than most of the locals make in a month.

We sat lazily looking out the window on the bus ride back, feeling accomplished and motivated to get a lot of work done this week. We had our fair share of adventures, but the perspective we gained kicked us into gear a bit. The need for MEOG is clear and its time has come. We spoke with organizations who are in desperate need of this kind of website, and we saw first hand the conditions of the people that those organizations help. It was a clear window for us into what development is all about, and reminded us why we are here in the first place.

Inspired,

Justin and Maura

UPDATED: A comment worth mentioning in the main post:
One of the bright spots I found in Montericco was the turtle guide community. To give some good press to a deserving guy, my guide was named Estuardo. He had a very sound environmental philosophy and genuinely cared about the impact people were having on the habitats. There is certainly a lot of poverty, but at 50Q per person per 2 hour tour, I feel like the guides must do okay? -Anonymous

Esquintla, Esquintla!

Que onda amigos,

So, this past Thursday we packed our things and headed to Esquintla, a city about an hour west of Antigua, so we could collect information on some of the organizations located there. It was also conveniently on the way to the beach, an added bonus, since we eventually ended up in Monterrico, an awesome black sand beach on the Pacific coast -- but more on that later :).

Aesthetically, Esquintla looks like a Guatemalan Bridgeport (for those of you familiar with Connecticut). However, unlike Bridgeport, it has obviously experienced some growth in the past few years, which makes for an interesting fusion between the globalization era and vestiges of old Guatemala. Tall buildings and electronics stores are juxtaposed with live-chicken vendors and fruit stands. The sidewalks are cluttered with traveling merchants selling plastic wares, mango slices, and fried chicken. The cracked and tattered streets are filled with speeding chicken buses, motorcycles, pedestrians, trash and enough black smoke and car fumes to make Justin forget he quit smoking last month.

As our standard procedure has become, we researched which NGO's operate in Esquintla and compiled a list of the organizations we hoped to visit that day--some with addresses, some without. New cities can be difficult, and as we were the only two Gringos wandering the streets, it was our first time outside of the tourist-town bubble. After an hour of searching for addresses that apparently don't exist, we began to ask locals if they were familiar with any NGOs in the area.

Our Spanish skills are improving, yet it is still difficult to explain who we are, why we are here, and why we don't have a specific name/address of the NGO we are looking for. Mind you, Guatemalans are some of the friendliest people either of us have ever met. Everyone we asked took the time to talk with us, and one woman walked us five blocks to the NGO she had recommended (even kissing us goodbye :), instead of just pointing and brushing us off.

Yet, even with the help of locals, finding what organizations were in Esquintla and where we could find them was difficult. Many were unaware of organizations in the area, or didn't know specific addresses. We ended up finding about ten organizations and surveyed five, only one of which can be found on any current online NGO database that we have come across. Point being, collecting this information is sure to be a trying experience, one we are sure we will get better at with practice and assistance, yet the needs for and potential benefits of MEOG are showing up left and right.


Hasta Pronto,

Maura and Justin

Greetings everyone,

My name is Rich Jurnack and I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you all to MEOG and introduce myself. I graduated from Temple University in 2007 with a BA in History and Modern Hebrew. Although hampered by a distracting obsession with baseball and an inability to focus my energies on any particular area of history, eventually I aim to attain a PhD in History. In the meantime, I have dipped my foot into issues of American labor justice through internships at a major New York City union and the labor rights non-profit organization "Jobs with Justice". My concern with social justice extends to my work in and passion for MEOG, and I like to think it drives everything I do.

As MEOG's News and Research chairman, I will be responsible for compiling and organizing the educational content that MEOG provides to its site-users. Currently, I am working on a development/historical overview of Guatemala and the issues that the average development agency faces. However, eventually (with help from our volunteers) this will expand into a complete set of issue summaries and historical overviews of every country in which MEOG expands. A daunting task, no doubt, but one that ideally will glue the site together and give interested parties an understanding of the basic problems facing the development community – as well as current solutions.

In addition to the development overviews, I am also tasked with MEOG's RSS development news feed that will keep all our site's members up-to-date on recent news and events of relevance to the development world. Furthermore, with writing that has been called "fustian and quotidian at best" by several of America's top writers, I have designated myself MEOG's top prose artist.

Once again, thank you all for your interest and support, and I look forward to working with everyone who I haven't already met.

Cheers,

Rich Jurnack

Three Weeks In

We've been in Guatemala for just over three weeks now, and we wanted to give an update on our progress. Things that have happened so far:

• Maura learned the hard way why they say don't drink the water.
• We rented an apartment in Antigua which we've been using as our home operating location.
  
• We are quickly moving forward with data collection: we've translated the surveys and have continued to administer them. Preliminary feedback is promising so far.
  
• We started collaborating with a woman in Antigua who has a large network of organizations in the area. She has been working in Guatemala for three years, and talking with her validated our assumptions that there is a demand (even a need) for MEOG's services. We will be attending a conference she is organizing for local development agencies this July.
• We fell in love with Pollo Campero (a fried chicken place that puts KFC to shame).
• Our work Stateside has been moving smoothly. The preliminary infrastructure for the website is currently being developed and many have been pitching in to research, write, and do other miscellaneous tasks that are fundamental to our future success (we thank everyone for their hard work!).
  
• We plan to continue our work in Antigua for the next two weeks, at which point we will move to our next city.
  
• We've started accepting donations under the auspices of a not-for-profit organization based here in Antigua. Contact us for more information on how to donate.
  

Life in Guatemala brings surprises everyday. You haven't lived until you've: 1) argued with a vendor at the local mercado over whether the tomatoes are 4 Quetzales a pound or 3.50Q ( a difference of 7 cents), 2) washed your clothes by hand in a pila, only to have it downpour two hours after hanging them to dry, 3) found bugs in your food, yet continued to eat so it wouldn't go to waste (don't worry we picked the bugs out first), or 4) traveled to Guatemala during the rainy season without a raincoat or an umbrella. All in all, our Spanish is rapidly improving, we're adjusting to Guatemalan life, enjoying the scenery, and loving every minute of building MEOG :)

Just a quick snapshot of a beautiful part of Antigua:


Nos Vemos,

Justin y Maura

Hola, Soy Maura

As this is my first post, I thought I would introduce myself a bit. I am (pending thesis :( ) finished with my Master’s in Economics from UConn, and have been working on MEOG right from the very beginning.

(This is me -- overlooking Antigua)

The idea, as you know, came from Justin’s experiences last summer in Guatemala, and the impetus to put the idea into action came one night following a particularly frustrating discussion concerning the disconnect between academia and grassroots level development. Being the young idealists and entrepreneurs that we are, Justin and I were motivated to action. Its grown a lot since we first discussed it, and we hope you will get excited about it too, much like we did that first night.

Amidst the frenzy of finishing our Master's coursework on time, Justin and I have worked the past few months (with the help of many) to develop and flesh out the ideas and mission of this project. The idea started in Guatemala, and that is where we have returned to put our work into action.

Coming to Guatemala without a return ticket home means the length of our stay here is pretty up in the air. Our tentative plan is to stay for the next three months (or until our money runs out :))but are ready to stay as long as it takes to get this site up and running. This is my first time in Guatemala, Justin's second, and we are both quickly adjusting to life in Guatemala.

So far this process has been both exciting and difficult, with a number of inevitable setbacks but also some hard-earned progress, and with hopefully many more adventures to come. I hope you will continue to be interested in our project, and maybe even get involved yourself. Check back here for updates on our progress, and feel free to post comments or ask questions.

Cheers,

Maura