Outline presentation for discussion of 'Crowdsourcing and the Third Sector: Beyond Hype and Myth' at the workshop

1. Beyond Hype & Myth:
Crowdsourcing and the Third Sector
Elric Honoré
Doctoral Candidate
Centre of Charitable Giving and Philanthropy (C-GAP)
Centre for Public Services Research
University of Edinburgh Business School
Email: v.e.honore(at)sms.ed.ac.uk

2. Background: researching
*
Philanthropy?
2. goodwill to fellow members of the human race;
especially: active effort to promote human
welfare
 Q: ‘what is goodwill? who says? What are
the boundaries? how is this justified?’
3. act or gift done or made for humanitarian
purposes
 Q: ‘who should give? what and in which
manner? how much is enough?’
• organisation(s)distributing or supported by funds
set aside for humanitarian purposes
 Q: is this the ‘Third Sector’? which
organisations to study? what’s new?
*(Merriam-Webster, 2011)

3. Background: researching
‘New’ Philanthropy?
• Philanthropic Intermediary Organisations (PIOs):
 More than coordinating platforms: market-makers
(Pharoah, 2007)
 Shaping donor-intermediary relationships (Daly, 2011;
Ostrander, 2007)
• Typical forms:
• Subsector detailed information & analyses: Guidestar,
New Philanthropy Capital
• Online advice and brokerage: Investing for Good
• Online giving platforms: GlobalGiving, Buzzbnk
• Donor advice/portfolio planning: wise
• Total client management: Geneva Global
• Social investment funds: Venture Philanthropy Partners
• Donor networking: The Funding Network
• Etc etc etc
• Buzzword(2010-): Crowdfunding
• Pioneers: Kiva, Buzzbnk(UK), SoLoCo(Scotland)
• Precursors: The Funding Network, Giving Circles UK

4. (business)
Contests
Microtasks
Crowd-
funding
Macrotasks

5. Crowdsourcing (academia)
• Buzzword/Etymology:
 Crowd + outsourcing
• Parent Field / Roots:
 ‘Open’ Innovation (e.g. Chesbourgh, 2003; von Hippel,
2005; Chesbourgh et al, 2008)
• Definition (Howe , 2006:5):
 ‘the act of a company or institution taking a function once
performed by employees and outsourcing it to an
undefined (and generally large) network of people in the
form of an open call’
 ‘This can take the form of peer-production (when the job
is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken
by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of
the open call format and the large network of potential
laborers’ [my emphasis]

6. Hype
 Crowdsourcing:
•Vehicle for reciprocity and citizenship
(‘Power from the people’, - Microtask, 4th April 2012)
•Alludes to horizontal collectivism
(The Wisdom of Crowds, Surowiecki,2004)
 Crowdfunding:
•Establishes whether there is market demand for an idea
[…], you can go straight to the market and get an answer,
cheaply and quickly’
(‘How crowdfunding can kickstart the Big Society’,
- Telegraph, 12th May 2012)
From :Philanthropy and Social Media (Institute of Philanthropy, 2011)

7. Myth
‘A new medium of human communications is emerging, one that
may prove to surpass all previous revolutions — the printing press,
the telephone, the television, the computer— in its impact on our
economic and social life’ (Tapscott 1996:xiii)
‘A society built around information tends to produce more of the
two things people value most in a modern democracy—freedom
and equality. Freedom of choice has exploded, in everything from
cable channels to low-cost shopping outlets to friends met on the
Internet. Hierarchies of all sorts, political and corporate, have come
under pressure and begun to crumble’ (Fukuyama 1999: 4)
Implied Myth: ‘Cyberspace will end history and politics’
(Mosco, 2004:53)
Creative Potential?

8. The Net:
From IS/HCI theory to Social Artefact
1961: Kleinrock’s thesis on packet-switching theory
 1st concept of redundancy for network resilience
1962: Baran’s ‘On Distributed Communications’
…
1963-2012: ARPANET; USE/BIT/NSFNETS/Internets
 RIP Minitel
Now:
 Rise of Network Society (Castells, 1996)
 The ‘Information Age’ (Benkler, 2006)
 The Social Network, Bookface, etc

9. •Some Stats:
 32.7% of world population online; 528% growth
rate over past decade
 84.1% of UK population; 49% on Facebook
(Internet World Stats, 25/06/2012)
 82.6% in Scotland (ONS,Q1-2012)
•More (disturbing) Stats:
 ‘Googling’ becomes verb (Merriam-webster, 2006)
 ~75% of internet users never scroll past the first
page of search results – (Marketshare.Hitslink.com,
2010)
 >90% of UK searches via Google (Don’t be evil)
This computer

10. So what? – policy & practice
Giving Green Paper (Cabinet Office, 2010):
Crowdfunding/p2p:
 Promoting online lending platforms such as Zopa, IndiGoGo
and Sponsume, etc
 Support for individual fundraising/giving platforms
Justgiving or micro-volunteering/marketplaces sites such as
slivers.com
 Encouraging localised ‘out of the loop’ platforms
Timebanking, Freecycle etc
Crowdsourcing:
 YourFreedom (2010)
 Red Tape Challenge (2010)
 NHS Patient Feedback Challenge (2012)
 Big Society?

11. Analogy – IS & Social Networks
Baran (1962)

12. Crowdsourcing & the
Third Sector
• Nothing new:
 Networked/peer-to-peer nature of the voluntary
sector
 Contribution to public services innovation
3. Double edged-sword:
 Bypasses conventional/centralised processes
 But requires a ‘healthy network’ (redundancy)
• One question:
 Are markets suited to do more than distribute
and allocate funds?
 i.e. Deciding what & not only how?

13. Questions, Suggestions &
Feedback?
Thank You