Monthly Archives: June 2007
Update on community platform.
I want to update my earlier post on using the social web as a community platform.
This morning we launched the Vancity Bike Share. In a nutshell…
Vancity Bike Share wants to see you to get on a bike, share it with others and spread the word about cycling. It is a chance to try alternative transportation, increase your daily exercise and share with your community.
We used ChangeEverything.ca as our platform to engage people and drive them to find out more and register. We ask participants to use the site to blog about their experiences with the bike, and also to find the person they want to pass the bike to after they’ve been riding it for three weeks. In addition to ChangeEverything.ca, we also used Facebook as a way to get the word out.
To be honest I wasn’t sure how it would go. Would people use these online tools to get involved? Could we use the social web to get people to take action? I hoped so, but I wasn’t sure.
But this event proves the power of a social network site. Within a week we had 23 applications to get a bike through the site, and the media attention has driven more people to the site to register and take part in the discussion.
Vancity has two factors working in our favour here: One is that we are local and deeply involved with the local community so the relevance factor is high. We tapped into issues (bike sharing and eco-friendly transportation) that Vancouverites care about and therefore the discussions on the site are meaningful to them. Second is that the values of Vancity, which are well known locally, fit with this initiative. People see it as genuine and trust the process. It doesn’t seem like ‘marketing’.
Asking some of the people who took one of the 40 bikes this morning, four told me they heard about it on Facebook. Amazing that at least 10% came from leveraging this social utility for free.
Read the bike share blog posts on ChangeEverything.ca.
Powerful stuff.
PS: I also need to say that Kate is my new favourite person!
Discovering kiva.org
In all the recent posts I’ve been reading about peer-to-peer lending, including the excellent reporting by Jim Bruene at NetBanker and Colin Henderson at The Bankwatch and CommunityLend, I hadn’t come across Kiva.org.
I’m very excited about social personal finance and think it may well change the way people exchange money when they just need to borrow or invest a small to medium amount and don’t want to bother with a bank or credit union.
But tonight my aunt showed me Kiva.org, and I got to admit I was a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know what it was. It’s an amazing concept where anyone can make microloans to people in the developing world who need small amounts of money to start an enterprise. According to their website:
Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.
You can cash out when you’re repaid or reinvest it into a new opportunity. I think this is genius. Did everyone else know about this and somehow I’m the last to the party? Hard to be shown up by my aunt after all…
I started tonight by investing $25. Kiva.org asks you for a 10% addition as a donation to keep them running. That’s optional. You can pay by PayPal or credit card. When you’re done you can easily send the info about the cause you donated to to your email list to spread the word. Nicely done.
Here’s who I donated to: Massan Aziado of Togo. Fantastic and inspiring!