The Cluetrain Manifesto taught us that markets are conversations. The same is true of making a better world. Open philanthropy must include constant engagement and conversation with partners, activists, policymakers and (god forbid) customers. Knowing what people think in real time with 75% accuracy (using cluetrain-style market research) is way better than finding out with 99% accuracy five years too late (using the rigorous and expensive evaluation processes that foundations love). This is especially true if people think what you are doing sucks, as you've still got time to fix it. Our aim is to do kind of listening in a very systematic way, and then to use what it is hearing and learning to steer the ship. Of course, this is probably the biggest challenge on our open philanthropy plate.
We believe in radical transparency. This means opening up not only your yearly books (we need to do this anyway), but also openly sharing your planning, learning and relationships as you go along. By the doing things like this, we hope to have partners who come with better ideas, offer improvements and even run with things on their own. That's what we want.
We believe that community should be a part of everything we do. Despite the rhetoric, most philanthropy and social investment happens in silos. The result is zero leverage, poor use of resources and slow progress. We believe that we should get down and dirty with communities working on education, innovation and access each step of the way. The open source world has lots to teach us about this.
Everything that the Foundation creates, funds or helps with should be open sourced. This means: under an open license; available in an open format; and accessible from a public web site, always. All of our consulting and grant contracts require this.
Open philanthropy uses transparency, participation, community and other open source principles to create a better world. Our aim is to run the Shuttleworth Foundation on these principles.
We pick people who are working in our focus areas and are at the top of their game. They are people who can highlight the issues at hand on podiums and in papers and help drive investment into the best possible showcase projects to drive policy change. These are not posts that one can apply for.
We have relationships with government at all levels. We rarely would have occasion to give money to them, we tend to work more to helping them achive their end game and invest in action based research to inform policy.
Each project is different. On the simplest of measures, success is when people start copying you – like the Freedom Toasters that are popping up on the continent and in North America and Europe. Others require more rigourous data evaluation. We current work with partners such as the HSRC and the Univeristy of Pretoria.
The Foundation is solely funded by Mark Shuttleworth. We receive an annual budget which we apportion to our various projects.
Wikipedia defines it as: Social Innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society. Over the years, the term has developed several overlapping meanings. It can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open source methods. Alternatively it can be used to describe innovations which have a social purpose - like microcredit or distance learning.
The concept can also be related to social entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship isn't always or even usually innovative, but it can be a means of innovation) and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance.
Social innovation can take place within government, within companies, or within the nonprofit sector (also known as the third sector), but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between the three sectors.
We believe that by effecting change within the education and technology areas we will be able to achieve the greatest results for every Rand invested.
Education and technology are the core areas that we believe individuals can use to best elevate themselves within society, and best empower themselves to contribute positively on themselves, their families, communities, and society as a whole.