The $5 philanthropist

A couple of months ago, I saw a movie that became an instant favorite of mine: Charlie Wilson's War. Charles Wilson was Congressman for the 2nd Congressional District of Texas. If you haven't seen the movie, check it out.

Today, I checked out TMZ.com, a Hollywood gossip website that is one of my guilty pleasures. Under the title Who Knew Congressman Were Cool? there was a small post about US Congressman John Culberson, who represents the 7th Congressional district who TMZ mentioned Twitters from the House floor.

So I followed him on Twitter and got a follow back immediately. I went to his website and noticed that he was about to hold a live town-hall webcast.

Congressman Culberson was the first to tweet from the House floor (even though Blackberry's are frowned upon on the floor) and tonight made history with the first ever live town hall web cast by a US Congressman.

I was interacting with him through Twitter and his UStream chat just before they started recording on UStream and it was great to see him using Summize, USTream, Twitter, and some kind of group phone-bank conference app. Talk about convergence.

Here is the embedded link to the town hall which at the time of this post is still going on:



Congressman Culberson was in his office alone and what was remarkable was that not only was he using these tools but he was totally open (i.e. not screening comments and phoners) and connected to his Constituents.

Congressman Culberson reminds me of Charlie in that he is very confident in his positions, a great orator, and quick on his feet.

It's now 930pm and the Congressman is still holding court with his constituents and has a following on his UStream of slightly more than 100 people. He is a pioneer in "Government 2.0" and a great example of what constituent communications using Web 2.0 looks like.

My prediction is that Congressman Culberson will develop a cult following (I predict an appearance on Colbert or Stewart within weeks). He is authentic, connected and accountable to his constituents and the feedback from his constituents on the town hall was overwhelmingly positive.

Elected officials everywhere, take note.

Labels: Government 2.0, john culberson, politics, US, web2

I submitted this Letter to the Editor last week in response to an article written by David Baines in the Vancouver Sun. I wanted to give the Sun sufficient time to run the letter prior to publishing this response on my blog.

I am writing in response to David Baines' column published Saturday, June 14th.

In it, Mr. Baines makes statements that are irresponsible, misleading and frankly, mistruths. First, I am asking for a retraction for the completely false and defamatory statement that "a lot of the money raised by GiveMeaning ends in [my] pocket." This statement is completely without merit. Second, there is ample media coverage of my reasons for starting GiveMeaning, and I in fact have said many times
that I was in search of something meaningful to do with my life and career. To suggest that "I have stumbled from one business and personal failure to another" is false and derogatory.

As GiveMeaning Foundation's CEO, it is my responsibility to point out that after Mr. Baines finishes with his attempts at character assassination, he then turns his attention to GiveMeaning Foundation's most recently filed financial statements with the Canada Revenue Agency. He starts by acknowledging that revenue nearly doubled from
our 2006 financial year, and that 73% of all revenue collected by the GiveMeaning Foundation in this most recent fiscal year was distributed to other charities. It should also be noted that this percentage is of all the revenue collected by the Foundation, including donations made to our Foundation for distribution to other charities, and gifts made to our Foundation specifically to cover our own costs of
providing the free service of a charity conduit. Mr. Baines also notes that as a percentage of overall donations, our administrative costs, which are covered by separate donations, have decreased from 2006.

Mr. Baines himself acknowledges that this recent annual report as filed with CRA is a significant improvement over our first full year of operations. However based on the slant of his editorials on me and GiveMeaning, it would be impossible for his editorial to end there, so he ridiculously asks your readers to subtract $645,000 of donations that GiveMeaning Foundation gave to registered charities, from our
annual report. He asks this in order to justify finishing with the statement, "This is a pretty ugly picture." The only ugly picture is the one drawn specifically from Mr. Baines' attempts at re-writing our annual report.

To be clear, in addition to processing gifts made directly via the website to specific projects, GiveMeaning also accepts donations made into donor advised funds. The purpose of a donor advised fund is to provide an individual donor benefits similar to those experienced by people with personal foundations. Having a donor advised fund at
GiveMeaning eliminates set-up costs and administrative obligations incurred by those with private foundations. Donor advised funds are not a new concept. This service is offered by leading financial institutions such as TD Bank and Scotiabank. Tides and Vancouver Foundation also offer donors the same service.

It should now be clear to readers that Mr. Baines has not made any attempt to analyze GiveMeaning from any fair or balanced perspective and that he is using his column to attempt to attack our credibility.

We are incredibly proud of how much progress has been made in creating and launching from scratch, a new, more efficient model for charitable giving. It's unfortunate that Mr. Baines continues to attempt to discredit GiveMeaning, a service which has helped hundreds of charities across Canada achieve their goals without charging any costs to them or their donors.

Sincerely,



Tom Williams,
CEO, GiveMeaning Foundation
givemeaning.com

Labels: cra, david baines, givemeaning, vancouver sun

Most everyone knows that I am a card-carrying Obamite. Many of my friends also know of my mild depression after HRC's wins in Ohio and Texas.

As an Obamite, I've signed up at BarackObama.com and receive regular email appeals signed by either David Plouffe or Barack Obama. Most of the emails are genuine communiques but inevitably include an appeal to "donate right now" typically asking for $25 dollars.

The success of Obama's online fundraising has been widely reported with particular emphasis Obama harnessing the "Power of Plenty" by receiving many small donations from a mass of individual donors.

After Ohio and Texas, I know I'm already fighting "Campaign Fatigue" but I wonder to what extent "Donor Fatigue" is starting to set-in.

A successful online fundraising campaign needs multiple appeals with different messaging which the Obama campaign has done well but I suspect that we'll see a dip (and perhaps a noticeable decline) in Obama's online fundraising due to a potent combination of Campaign and Donor Fatigue.

As a means by which to counteract both fatigues, I would advise the Obama campaign to send out several emails with links to their favorite YouTube clips, websites and articles with no mention of an appeal. Have some candid YouTube clips of Obama like the dinner-party clips from a while back. Adjust the momentum of their outbound emails and start rallying the troops before April 22nd.

Labels: barack obama, fundraising, online, politics, social media. web, strategy, US

One of the most memorable nights I had last November in Africa was visiting with a couple that drilled bore holes (to provide clean drinking water) in Uganda. At the time of my visit, they were packing up to move operations to Sudan.

The couple was originally from South Africa and were very gracious hosts to me and my traveling companions. At their house, they were caring for a litter of newborn puppies, one of whom is featured below.



I remember my hosts complaining that NGO workers and other temporary workers in Northern Uganda who adopted stray animals should have the "decency to kill the dogs when they leave." I understood (though didn't totally agree with) the point she was making: That it's "far worse" to give stray dogs a home and a stable food supply only to then abandon that dog months later and force it to return to a life of disease, starvation and suffering.

Then, on January 1st, I was reading an article published in the Globe & Mail by Lisan Jutras (no longer available free online) which spoke about the problem of stray animals in vacation "hot spots" like the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Mexico.

As someone whose heart is split evenly between a passion for international development and animals of all kinds, I often feel a tug-of-war between my passion for animals and my passion for people. How (I often think) could I possibly invest resources in a few stray dogs when people in that same community are starving?

I wonder how other people who have almost equal compassion for animals as they do humans resolve or manage this tension?

here is a story about a rescue dog being flown from Iraq to the USA.

Labels: animal welfare, animals, development, questions

According to Barack Obama's official website, more than 280,000 people have created accounts on BarackObama.com.

From those online accounts, 6,500 grassroots volunteer groups have been created and more than 13,000 off-line events have been organized through the site.

Over 370,000 individual online donations have been made, more than half of which are less than $25 donations .

And most interesting to me, personal fundraising pages (individual fundraising pages where you proactively recruit your social network to donate through your personal fundraising page) have raised over $1.5m.

Obama's campaign really emphasizes the "Power of Plenty" and demonstrates the power of grassroots fund-raising.

My critique of the Barackobama.com website is that the functionality of the fundraising page is that it provides no opportunity for me to link my blog (the site offers simple hosted-blog functionality) with my fundraising page, which seems to be a big missed opportunity.

Also, there is probably a ton of great social media buried deep within the site but no
way to easily search or browse other great stories of people joining the Hope Revolution.

Labels: barack obama, online, online fundraising, social media. web

Mr. Baines has published in the Vancouver Sun his fourth installment on his opinion of me and that of GiveMeaning and the work it has set out to do.

Baines told me when I first responded to him that as an editorialist, he was free to write his opinions. And so, in summary, his opinions appear to be:

1) I have gotten too much positive attention and praise in the media, most of which I don’t deserve;
2) I am most undeserving of praise because as a teenager and young-adult, I made some mistakes;
3) That before starting GiveMeaning, I ended a business relationship acrominiously and that story (or one side of it) merits publication and judgment in the court of public opinion;
4) That I naively bragged of my media savviness in an interview more than 7 years ago, which almost merits publication ;
5) And finally, that neither I nor GiveMeaning should be trusted because of the points above;

It is quite clear from his articles that Baines doesn’t like me and apparently a few former “friends” and associates feel the same way. But I am not sure this is worthy of 4 articles which are almost entirely personal and don’t establish any balanced or well reasoned arguments as to why GiveMeaning should not be allowed to operate as a registered charity financed by generous donations. Baines brings up the point that GiveMeaning’s donations have been subsidized by tax-payers. He repeatedly makes this statement knowing full well that the same is true of any other registered charity.

Baines has chosen an interesting time in my life to attack me: I have finally grown up. In his four articles, he has attacked me not for anything that I am currently doing now but for mistakes I've made in my past. This must be because there is no story in suggesting that GiveMeaning is up to anything other than trying to achieve and facilitate social good.

I admit I have made mistakes in my life. GiveMeaning is evidence that I have learned from those mistakes and am now devoting my energy to the betterment of others rather than myself.

Baines has no evidence of nefarious behaviour at my foundation or that it is not in complete compliance with CRA’s regulations. We can all take confidence in the fact that an investigative journalist of Baines’ experience has nothing but innuendo after 4 weeks of “research”. His primary innuendo is that the measure of GiveMeaning Foundation’s efficiency is the percentage of receipted donations which is transferred to other charities in the same fiscal period. To be clear:

100% of what is raised through GiveMeaning Foundation for projects listed on the website is distributed to qualified donees.
GiveMeaning has operating costs like any organization and like any start-up, costs are high in creating a new organization from scratch. Those operating costs have been funded by donors who recognize that overheads covered by GiveMeaning Foundation reduce the overheads of other charities, primarily struggling small charities.

We take it as a point of pride that we do not share or sell the names of donors and have had this policy from the very beginning. In fact, we state it clearly in the About page of our website and so I cannot release donors names. This is undoubtedly a prudent policy in a sector when too many charities sell the names of their donors.

Baines also mentions that before I decided to stop speaking to him that I offered him the opportunity to speak with some of our donors. This is true. I don't think it should be of any surprise that after reading his articles, that none of our supporters would wish to speak with Baines. Had he chosen to wait and speak with donors before writing his articles, I know he would have found what he says he's looking for: Donors who understand and respect the service we are providing. Given the personal nature of his articles and his reputation for a particular form of editorial, it should come as no surprise that I was advised not to talk with him. Note that this is the first time I have ever stopped talking with a person of the press.

To now enter Blake Bromley into Baines questioning of my or GiveMeaning's integrity only hurts Baines' case further. Blake is one of the most highly respected charity lawyers in Canada, if not the world. Not only was Blake Bromley proven innocent of the charges that Baines brings up, his reputation and professional practice thrives in spite of the assaults of CRA and David Baines. Baines fails to mention that Blake was also cleared by the Law Society which investigated the accusations as they would of a complaint against any lawyer.

One of the very few new things that Baines has written about today is a charity called Amazing Grace Foundation of which I am a director.

I have received no fees or had any expenses paid by Amazing Grace Foundation. Amazing Grace has received funds for specific projects, as have many other charities. The reason money didn’t flow directly from donors to Amazing Grace is because this charity (like others who use GiveMeaning) doesn’t have the technology to raise money via the internet nor does it have the money to fundraise. Instead he refers to a “circular flow of money”. What is circular about a donor coming to GiveMeaning.com and making a donation which is flowed through to Amazing Grace at 100 cents on the dollar and spent by Amazing Grace to achieve its charitable purposes? Perhaps by “circular” Baines meant “straight line”.

Baines has said that as a young man, I had some screw-ups and wasn’t as much of a “whiz kid” as I and some media outlets have portrayed myself as. Ok.

It is my past that has led me to my present. My past drives me to work as hard as I do. In the past, as Baines has made readers aware, I often ran or walked away from challenges and problems. That time is over. David Baines has only increased my resolve and inspired me to most certainly stay and continue to fight for this fledgling charity the Vancouver Sun has devoted so much energy and space to discrediting.

Ironically, Baines has said what I have known and spoken about for a long time. That up until starting GiveMeaning, I was more “famous for being famous” than for actually accomplishing anything. Baines has perhaps done me a service by bringing that weakness to the fore. It is a pity that in his zeal to tear me down he could not recognize that with the help of so many of you I am now finally building something great. I want to thank Baines for inspiring me to be both a better man and a better steward of GiveMeaning’s resources. More importantly, I want to thank you for standing with me in this time of trial.

Labels: david baines, editorial, reply, vancouver sun

Readers of the Vancouver Sun might have noted that Sun columnist David Baines continues to pursue a selective investigation of my past, this time beginning with a quote from a 2000 CBC Interview I gave seven years ago.

In it, I reference a CBC television interview done much earlier. I was featured jumping on a couch singing and dancing to a song. In the 2000 interview, I'm quoted as saying "Do you think I ever woke up in the morning, surveyed my apartment and said, 'Maybe I'll crank the tunes and jump on my couch for a while?' I don't think so." I spoke confidently and naively about my media awareness, going further with a comment that I told people "amazing, wonderful, and, in most cases, untrue stories about [myself]."

In this second column, Baines searches for investigative credibility in quotes taken from my father’s participation in the same interview. He said that I was “a prototypical child of the electronic age. He knows how to use the sound-bite. ... He will give you a sentence that will be tailored for you to put into your news broadcast. He is a child of the age in that sense."

The point in bringing this material up from seven years ago and then observing the amount of media that together with GiveMeaning I have garnered quite deliberately since, is to suggest that if I was "spinning" then, I must be spinning now. In a vain effort at making his point Mr. Baines brings up my short-lived employment at a firm called Whalen, Beliveau. I began there when I was 17 and ended a year later when the Vancouver office of the firm split to merge with another firm.

My entire salary was paid as an advance or draw against commissions. This simply meant that before I was entitled to any bonuses from commissions, all of my salary would be deducted and any additional expenses I incurred would first be repaid. Mr. Baines is correct that I did not close any deals where a commission was paid to Whalen, Beliveau, but this is because I was working to develop a new field of client, not because I didn't work strenuously on behalf of my employer.

Under the terms of my employment I was responsible for my own expenses and Whalen Believeau lent me the money to pay these expenses pending receipt of commissions. When Whalen, Beliveau split to join a new firm I was sent a letter by the Montreal office of Whalen, Beliveau demanded that I repay the loan. Since my employment had ended unexpectedly I had no income to do so and Whalen Beliveau ultimately did not pursue me further.

Quite separately, because this money was in fact a “debt owing”, and under the advice of counsel, certain of the facts are as Mr. Baines reports; specifically that I declared as income the advances I received and claimed the paid expenses. It is true that Canada Revenue Agency originally disallowed the expense claims on the grounds that I didn't pay them. It is true that I appealed that ruling, arguing that even though I didn't pay the expenses directly, I was liable to the firm for the full amount. The Tax Court decided that I had done everything correctly and Canada Revenue Agency did not appeal the court decision. It is not true that I didn’t “earn” this income as Mr. Baines quite wrongly suggests. I consider the matter closed although I am reserving the right to consider Mr. Baines assertions more formally.

In his first column focusing on me, Baines quotes a recent interview I gave to a Victoria-based newspaper called "Monday Magazine" in which the interview asked me "why aren't you more of a dick?" I responded with a column filling quote captured by Mr. Baines "I think because I was a dick," Williams replied. "This path I'm on now is only something I arrived at after having fully explored my own dickiness." But really there isn’t anything new here. I have been consistent and candid in suggesting that the motivation to start GiveMeaning lay in part to redeem myself and correct the course that I seemed to be headed-down.

And so, Mr. Baines speaks of my past grabbing thoughtless quotes from a teenager delighted with the new attention of the media. What a sleuth! He points to the typical failures of anyone attempting to find the right path to follow in his search for a worthy future. With GiveMeaning now a cause for celebration Mr. Baines is sure there is something wrong with the picture and so he has chosen to search in the past in an effort to discredit me and the work of GiveMeaning.

When Mr. Baines first called me, I decided to speak openly to him and spoke to him several times both the day before his first column and then a few days after it appeared. That won’t happen again.

If Mr. Baines had taken the trouble to read or watch any of the recent interviews in full, the ones particularly about GiveMeaning, he would know that I am in this for the long haul and I am in this completely. I am nothing if I am not open although people like Mr. Baines are quickly making me much less naïve.

As far as anything else that might appear on the web posted in an effort to capitalize on the cheap shots of someone who should know better, I would much rather you wrote me directly.

Labels: david baines, response, vancouver sun

A writer named David Baines called me on Friday morning to let me know he was writing a piece on me and GiveMeaning in the next morning's paper. Armed with our 2005 and 2006 annual reports we file with Canadian Revenue Agency, he recites publicly available numbers namely that we received $234,632 in tax-receipted donations (which are largely donations we received through our website for the projects on GiveMeaning.com) and another $730,350 from charitable foundations to pay GiveMeaning's administrative costs in operating the website in Canada.

He specifically states that I "refused to identify any of these donors" when in fact, I offered for him to speak with some of GiveMeaning Foundation's donors and yet he didn't take me up on this. I find it odd that Baines appeared to rush to publish this article, calling me for the first time the day before the article was supposed
to run.

Nevertheless, his main contention is that GiveMeaning Foundation has spent more money building the GiveMeaning brand and service than it has raised money for its projects. This is not only not in dispute but not surprising to anyone that knows anything about a start-up business. GiveMeaning launched its re-vamped website in late September of 05. Prior to that, our web presence was in Beta and very little transactions flowed through. The numbers that Baines is reporting on is our first full year of collecting tax-receipted donations in Canada for the GiveMeaning website. Given that our
average donation through the website is about $40, our first-year tally of money raised for projects is not surprising. It's also not surprising to anyone that understands the nature of a start-up that in the first few years of operation that start-up costs will exceed revenues. It took eBay eight years to make a profit.

Baines can't understand "why certain undisclosed charities would give money to pay overhead for what is essentially a charitable conduit." Foundations are investing in GiveMeaning because they recognize that the GiveMeaning service is helping charities of all sizes make fundraising easier and less costly. By supporting our work at
GiveMeaning, they are providing an infrastructure for all charities to use. He seems unaware that foundations regularly make grants to other foundations for capacity and infrastructure costs.

Of course I draw a salary and yes, my wife works as a contractor for GiveMeaning. Baines seems to think that GiveMeaning should run without staff and expense and that it's wrong for charitable foundations to provide GiveMeaning with the financial resources to build its service, a service used by charities of all sizes.

Baines seems unable to draw distinction between money raised through the GiveMeaning.com website for projects and money raised separately from donors who support our admin costs. When he says "Williams insists that, whenever a person gives money for a particular charity, 100 per of that money gets to the named beneficiary. That may be true, but it does not mitigate the fact that the vast majority of the
overall money collected during 2006 went to administration." By lumping together these two costs as one, he is ignoring the simple fact that the donors giving to our operating costs are doing so specifically FOR our operating costs and that donors giving through the website for projects have 100% of their funds passed on
the Implementing Organization responsible for carrying-out that
project.

It can't be laid out more clearly than what we have in our About Us section which reads "We charge nothing for donations collected online and even cover the credit card costs associated with each donation. We rely on the support of generous donors and advertisers to provide this service."

Baines leaves readers with his own judgement on what is or isn't philanthropy, passing judgement on a fantastic grassroots economic development initiative out of Uganda which trains Ugandan people to build guitars and then sells those guitars in North America to create self-sustaining, economic development and on Wild ARC, which is the
division of the BC SPCA that provides rehabilitation and care to injured animals. Baines doesn't think Sea Otters and poor Ugandan people fall into the class of "quality charities." He's entitled to his opinion but the whole point of GiveMeaning is to give grassroots initiatives an opportunity to find their audiences as we believe that any charitable initiative deserves to have the opportunity to better find and connect with supporters who care about those causes.

Baines' final point sums it up nicely. He says that "we have a responsibility to scrutinize all charitable endeavours to ensure that we are getting decent value for our dollar." He clearly doesn't think that GiveMeaning's service is needed, valuable or useful to the charities and donors we serve. And that spending money on a new way
of fixing a big problem is not warranted. He's entitled to his opinion.

Labels: givemeaning