The document outlines a process for connecting seekers in need with solvers who can provide micro-tasks for payment through crowd funding. Village chiefs and community activists help identify solvers and seekers, and ensure quality control. Solvers complete tasks like visits, errands, and teaching for a small stipend. Funds come from donors who can track progress in real time. The goal is to provide income opportunities for women while addressing community needs through a sustainable and scalable social microwork model.

2. The process
• We start by engaging the village chief/ • Each task pays the same stipend (e.g. 2US$ for a
community activists and Nokia’s CSR department. maximum of 3 hours of help. Once the solver
• The village chiefs and community activists help us completes the job, she takes a picture and/or
identify and recruit solvers and register seekers writes a text that is converted to a tweet or
• Solvers are female social micro workers who update for the website providing real time info to
provide a social task to seekers (the most crowdfunders
marginalised people in the community) for a • How can we ensure that the solvers aren’t gaming
stipend paid by crowd funding. The crowd the system
therefore acts as the micro entrepreneur paying – Peer monitoring from the group of women
for social tasks at the BOP. Social tasks include- involved in micro work who understand
visiting, collecting medicine, cooking, light that the scheme may be disbanded or
cleaning, basic teaching, texting family members severely curtailed should there be fraud- a
etc. similar system has been used successfully
• Each solver will be responsible for one or several for micro financing which lent loans to
seekers – e.g. orphans, elderly, handicapped. groups and utilised group pressure to
• Each solver must be equipped with a phone and ensure timely payback
we will engage Nokia’s CSR department to help us – The community activist/ chief will be paid
in this regard. to monitor/ follow up on the status of the
• The solver proactively checks the needs of its seekers
seekers and sends a text with the details of the – We will utilise governance or rules to
jobs to socialmicrowork.org restrict the impact of fraud eg a solver
• Once there are funds in the relevant category cannot spend more than 6 hours on one
(handicapped, orphans, etc), the solver is seeker
provided a text confirming that she can undertake – In areas where mobile penetration is high
the micro task, the task is flagged as booked seekers can confirm that the job has been
online and the money is committed satisfactorily completed via a text prior to
the solver being paid

4. Social Microwork.org is a not for profit built
on a few key principles
Strong focus on driving revenue growth We propose the following:
– Village chiefs and community activists get paid a fee for
•Grant to cover initial start up costs. helping us to set up the service early in the process Then
•Crowdfunding- funds channelled directly to pay social microworkers they are paid a fee for overseeing the system ( the fee can
a stipend at the BOP and to cover their expenses- utilise established either be personal or a community development fee). We
crowd funding websites eg CreateaFund (www.createafund.com) subsidise at cost, phone usage, travel and their ongoing
which tightly integrates with services like PayPal and Facebook to
expenses related to the model
ensure a cohesive donor experience from start-to-finish. We will also – Social Microworkers.com is the hub that hosts and manages
the software, runs reports to ensure that no one solver is
establish corporate crowd matching campaigns where a corporation gaming the system, is responsible for crowd funding and
is asked to match the crowd’s contributions for that month etc. fundraising, donor engagement, measuring impact ( eg of
• Evidence suggests people are more likely to donate more money metrics to be tracked- direct outreach to the poor, improved
when they use virtual currencies and credits (Hayes and Graybeal) well being) and setting up these models in multiple regions
thus our crowd funding will be in the form of our micro job currency- ( franchise model). Socialmicrowork.com will be run as a
10 micro-jobs for the cost of 25US as an example. They will also be
lean operation- reports automated, tight budgets. We also
standardize the business format, so we can replicate the
given to opportunity to contribute at multiple levels, one time, model in multiple communities
periodically or life time where the commit to raising funds for 5000 – For solvers- In addition to the stipend, the major cost is
micro jobs. We will post pictures of their fund raising activities on mobile related. We will try to negotiate a low denomination
line. vouchers plan so that they require less to stay on the
network thus making them less likely to be disconnected
whilst retaining higher percentages of their pay.
Working closely with our preferential partner – NOKIA to ensure
that we have the phone penetration required to support the system
•Attractive proposition ensuring high demand and supply
•Seekers will be interested because it offers them support in
A lean but fair cost model that incentivises all players the community, solvers will be interested because it is a form
•A challenge of the model is striking a careful balance between of meaningful employment, village chiefs/ activists will be
interested as it helps their community. Crowdfunders will be
providing sufficient incentives for our local partners on the ground vs interested because the focus is the most marginalised and they
keeping commissions low for the model to be sustainable. can see the impact almost real time of their funds.

5. Benefits
High novelty Economies of scale and scope combined for a
•The business model draws together several business viable not for profit
models that are currently working-Innovation intermediary •Economies of scale arise because the marginal cost of providing the
/Innocentive model linking seekers with solvers of micro service at the hub ie socialmircrowork,com diminishes significantly with
task, crowd funding, micro philanthropy and also mobile for every additional community that is added
•Economies of scope ie providing a range of services lead to more
micro work ( in relation to updating community needs and
consistent employment for solvers
also real time updating of completion of tasks for donors)
NOKIA- The preferred partner
High Impact For Nokia- By increasing phone penetration ( both seekers and solvers
•We are explicitly bridging the gaps for the 300 million must access a phone) ,this increases their brand penetration but also
women currently excluded from the social and personal does a lot of social good by creating the infrastructure for the community
empowerment true lack of ownership of mobile to grow and thus social goals are helping to achieve business goals.
telecommunications .
•There is potential redistribution of wealth in the form of Feasibility
value adding work for women - Its not a hand out but an Technology exists, software can be written for Socialmicrowork.com and
most importantly we have a pilot community which can be used as proof
opportunity to contribute to those most in need in the of concept- Conrado in Brasil a poor community of 3000 people in which
community. we have deep ties and have already gotten confirmation from the
•We are also helping the most marginalised …the poorest community activists of his interest in our project.
of the poor
•Our model can be easily scaled via a franchising and is Donor engagement
thus designed for replication to other communities Donor engagement is high- texts and pics from the community are
converted into tweets / updates so that the donor sees fairly real time the
impact his money is having
Most importantly, these Micro-actions by our solvers send  positive micro-loops not
just for the marginalised but for the community fabric as a whole