Small Change is feeding the good that already is. Small Change is little individuals, taking immediate next steps. Small Change is modest, but meaningful, personal giving. Small Change is blogging and tagging. Small Change, next steps, modest giving, blogs, links and tags — are making a world of difference. The Small Change News Network is an experiment in Small Change.

Origin and Purpose

Small Change News Network (sCNN), started as the odd possibility that Google and eBay could get together to make an auction-type market for the projects, stories, needs and offerings of little individuals who are making and giving “small change” in ways that are making a “big” and positive difference. While the form keeps changing, the purpose of sCNN remains the same: to notice and connect “small change,” to feed the good that already is making a world of difference.

Long-term, the vision is a sort of open source foundation, where anyone can play board member and tag something as worthy of attention and funding. The endowment fund is effectively the total pot of what everyone, all donors, is willing to give. In practical terms, this means making our peak-performance responses to recent disasters into our ordinary, everyday philanthropic practice in equally important situations, near and far, all around the world.

Continual Evolution

This venture was first developed, at the Giving Conference, as “gBay.” When the corporate connections fell through, it morphed into GivingMarket and ultimately into sCNN.

Structurally, it evolved from a corporate joint venture to various forms of bank, foundation, dating service, and ultimately into a weblog. In each iteration, it gets simpler. Now it seems that sCNN could be as simple as a technorati tag: SmallChangeNews or sCNN — something anyone, anywhere can use to mark and brand and link instances of little individuals using small change to make a world of difference.

In this way, sCNN attempts to scale by dissolving — into this rising tide of little individual giving and action, to feed into a trend toward smaller, direct giving to more personal, caring and effective action. The shift from weblogging to tagging is an active and practical response to the push of outer circumstances (funding, technology, marketplace) and the pull of inner purpose (personal passion, partnership, philanthropy).

Good Company

In the first year of development, sCNN was supported by dozens of people, some of whom contributed to a total of $600 that was used to cover basic and direct expenses. There’s no way to know how much additional giving took place because of the connections made through sCNN postings and linkings. We know that a number of weblogs started with sCNN support, including Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network and ImagineNepal, feeding the development of a peaceful development movement there.

Along the way, we’ve also discovered a number of fantastic resources and marketplaces springing up on the web, leading to the conclusion that sCNN doesn’t need to be a big deal, a major project, a fundraising effort, proprietary database, professional staff, and ever-expanding budget to make a difference in this emerging world. See the list of Tools and Gifts in the sidebar for things like DropCash, GlobalGiving, ModestNeeds, and the OmidyarNetwork where projects like FridgeMagnets and OneTinCup are springing up. Notice, too, that when the Asian tsunami and Gulf Coast hurricanes struck, giving and markets sprung up immediately and naturally, far beyond the standard institutional giving options.

Product and Practice

sCNN has been a demonstration model and a working experiment for a new, more mutual, way of practicing philanthropy. What we’ve learned so far is that it must do and be (practice), for itself, what it asks (invites) others to try. It needs to be simultaneously leading edge and easy, innovative and accessible, locally and personally practiced and globally relevent and scalable. It must, itself, depend on individual gifts, but work to invite giving everywhere else. And it seeks to suggest that Tsunami- and Katrina-style attention and giving are necessary and appropriate for all of the difficult conditions that are ever-present in the world today, not just when it’s a media event.

Is sCNN a product or a practice? Certainly it must be both, but differently. The product must be public, global, chaotic and emergent. At the same time the practice must be personal, local, disciplined and devoted. As sCNN moves from blogging to tagging, the “thing” that it is — a tag rather than a weblog — gets more global, more accessible, more chaotic and emergent. It might even disappear altogether as a result of this new span and volatility. Our individual practices, however, are simultaneously free to get more local, personal and direct. In this way, our invitation can open newer and wider while our practice of noticing where little individuals and small change is making a world of difference can show up more often and powerfully.

From Blogging to Tagging

The original sCNN weblog is now fully integrated into individual personal and business practices, as they already appear and continue to evolve, at MichaelHerman.com and many other weblogs. The original 100 or so postings have been merged into the weblog of sCNN initiator, Michael Herman.

This page now serves as the main homepage for SmallChangeNews and sCNN, as they are practiced locally and invited globally — an evolving view of philanthropic action and an emergent practice of online tagging. The main tools for the SmallChangeNews tagging experiment, a foray into philanthropic folksonomy, will likely be Technorati.com and del.icio.us.

The Way Forward

-Bust this page into linked subpages w/ new sidebar
-Add Invitation: link and tag (how to join)
-Add Links: category, techtags, delicious, partners, blog pdf, conference, subpages (in roll)
-Setup delicious tags and RSS feeds