GivingMarket

The Giving Market: A Small Change Exchange for the Common Good

...because you shouldn't need an organization to change the world. The personal passion, unique gifts, spare time, financial resources, social capital, life skills and experience and any other resources you might have or be in touch with ought to be enough to get something started, to make small change happen. The GivingMarket is for all kinds of small gifts and donations, news of small successes, plans for small improvements, and /LittleIndividuals to connect in ways that can make a big difference. The GivingMarket invites /ActiveCitizens to answer the same two questions: What do you have to offer? and What do you need? ...in order to do the thing(s) you know you can do and that you know would make the world you live in a better place.

What follows here are working notes on the development of the GivingMarket -- an open, efficient marketplace to which "little individuals" could bring their passions, gifts, skills and experience and offer them as common good, community development, project plans and proposals. This GivingMarket would help these little individuals (who might even hold day jobs within non-profit orgs) make effective requests for the support (financial and otherwise) that they'd need from other little individuals in order to move their plan(s) forward. Think of this as an eBay sort of market for projects for doing good, an online matching service for organizers and funders, and a Google of Bloggers for the common good.

• /ProjectSummary? ...an overview. see also /CoreAssumptions?, /SmallChange, /BigChange and [InterraProjectMapping]
• /DevelopmentLog? ...blog-style chronology of the short, steep trajectory of this idea
• /ToDoList?

• /HomePage ...also /ProfilePage, /ProjectPage, /OrganizingPage and Customization, Searching, Suggesting, Giving, Tracking, Reputation etc.
• /OpenQuestions ...to be addressed in the course of short-term site development and long-term economic evolution
• /WorkingModels ...where pieces of this are already alive and working in the real world
• /KindredSpirits ...other people and sites that have something to offer/inform this project

• /ConferenceNotes ...from the original working session convened during the Giving Conference in Chicago
• /AfterThoughts ...some post-conference notes and reflections

Comments and questions... mailto:mherman@globalchicago.net. or post at /CommentsAndQuestions. Thanks!

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