It’s called “Redefining Action Hero: Bill Gates is Better than Batman.” Frugal Dad had this to say on it:

I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates. Not just because he’s been wildly successful, but because as far as I can understand, he’s kept a steady head about him in spite of his success. As one of the wealthiest men in the world, he’s also making a name for himself as one of the most philanthropic.

Obviously most of us don’t have the kind of capital that Bill Gates has to work with, but I feel that everyone could learn from his philosophy towards philanthropy. I admire that his approach is both compassionate and practical. He sees charitable endeavors as something well worth investing in, because ultimately everyone benefits from an overall better quality of life around the world. He sums it up himself pretty well: “[The] hybrid engine of self-interest and concern for others can serve a much wider circle of people than can be reached by self-interest or caring alone.” I feel like that’s a refreshingly balanced philosophy. Not only that, but as this Infographic shows, there are direct results that speak to just how powerful a well-informed and carefully invested philanthropist can be.

Source: frugaldad.com

I won’t make any jabs at Steve Jobs out of respect, but Bill Gates is a pretty amazing person. I think it’s about time he gets credited for all the amazing philanthropy work he has done.

That’s a lot of causes to be taking on, but Google has partnered with numerous organizations in order to make the most of their efforts. The STEM organizations will be working to encourage students to embrace the science/tech/engineering/math field and hopefully take advantage of the 2.4 million jobs that will be created in this arena over the next six years.

Google has also focused on improving education for girls in areas such as Africa and the Middle East. With the benefit of education, a girl will “earn 25% more money, be 3 times less likely to contract HIV/AIDS, and have a smaller, healthier family.” With their partners, Google aims to help educate more than 10,000 girls living in the developing world.

It’s no secret that low and middle-income countries have significantly less access to digital technology. Through the use of social media, open source programming, and other technology platforms, Google hopes it can increase the economic growth of impoverished regions of the world and foster a prosperous environment that will bring about much-needed change.

Beyond propelling change into future generations, Google also wants to initiate change now starting with the liberation of slaves. According to studies, “there are more slaves today than at any other point in history” but Google hopes to provide freed slaves with the means and tools to return to their villages and help educate people from being tricked or forced into slavery. Google expects that their plan will liberate over 12,000 people from modern-day slavery as well as protect millions of others from becoming victimized into this pure, abject misery.

This year alone, Google contributed more than $100 million for various causes around the world, $40 million of which were grants distributed to organizations designed to undertake the four causes listed above. To learn more, see a list of participating organizations enlisted for each cause or find out how to become involved in the cause(s), visit Google Gives Back.

For the cynics out there: yes, this also happens to serve as a push to increase usage of Google’s products and services.  The company isn’t just offering to lend nonprofits its accountants and buy everyone a few billboards.

Still, a post on the Google Nonprofits Blog explained, “If you work for a nonprofit, this program provides you with several new benefits. . . .  If approved, you can access our suite of product offerings designed for nonprofits: up to $10,000 a month in advertising on Google AdWords to reach more donors, free or discounted Google Apps to cut IT costs and operate more efficiently, and premium features for YouTube and our mapping technologies to raise awareness of your cause.”

Then the post noted a couple more perks, continuing, “We’ve also developed other online resources such as educational videos, case studies and better ways for you to connect with other nonprofits.”

Organizations seem to be responding well so far, as the video below shows.  And of course, as a worst case scenario, Google for Nonprofits is just something an organization can ignore.

More information is available here if you’re interested (or if you’d like to email a link to whatever charitable groups you support).

Zuckerberg did this by taking the Giving Pledge, something organized by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates.  The simple (and official) explanation is that it’s "an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in America to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy."

Zuckerberg reasoned in a statement, "People wait until late in their career to give back.  But why wait when there is so much to be done?  With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts."

This act establishes a definite pattern of non-greedy behavior on Zuckerberg’s part.  The CEO of Facebook is known for favoring t-shirts over tailored suits.  He drives an Acura TSX rather than an Italian sports car, and at least until recently, lived in a modest rented house.

Plus, in September, Zuckerberg volunteered to give $100 million to New Jersey public schools.

A round of applause for Facebook’s CEO, then.  And while you’re at it: other people who just took the Giving Pledge include Carl Icahn and Dustin Moskovitz.

For the sake of ending on a positive note, let’s point out two problems here.  First, the timing of Google’s announcement is terrible, considering that this involves five concepts and a total of $10 million, whereas Mark Zuckerberg just donated $100 million to improve the Newark, New Jersey school system.

Also, Google’s bound to encounter some criticism over taking 24 months to reach a decision.

Still, let’s get back to thinking happy thoughts and run through the winners.  The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences is first alphabetically, and as you might have guessed, it promotes the study of graduate-level math and science in Africa.

Next up is FIRST, which uses math- and science-oriented competitions to similar effect for the sake of young(er) people.  Then there’s the KHAN Academy, an organization dedicated to putting educational videos online so that everyone can learn for free.

Following that comes Public.Resource.Org, which is trying to make more government documents available online.  Finally, there’s Shweeb, "a concept for short to medium distance, urban personal transport, using human-powered vehicles on a monorail."

Shweeb’s interesting, to see the least.  See a pic of a prototype for yourself below.

Now, as that’s sure to have put a smile on your face, we’ll just wish you a good weekend.

The popular pizza chain announced today that it has kicked off a campaign to donate 4 meals to World Hunger Relief for every Twitter user who re-tweets the link to the Pizza Hut World Hunger Foundation donation page.

"Global hunger has reached epic proportions this year – reaching more than 1 billion hungry people around the world," said Pizza Hut President Scott Bergren. "At Pizza Hut, our goal is to get the word out about what can be done to help feed the hungry. We’re asking our customers to help us spread the word through a simple tweet, and in exchange we will provide meals for World Hunger Relief."

According to Pizza Hut, all you have to do to help is post a tweet on Twitter that includes a link to http://ow.ly/qWn8, and the hashtag #pizzahut, and they will donate four meals to the hungry. The donation period ends on October 31. Donations will be made for the first 25,000 tweets, which will mean 100,000 meals.

Pizza Hut says the funds raised will go directly to the areas of greatest need, feeding poor school children in the developing world and helping villages become self-sustainable. Employees of Pizza Hut and other Yum! Brands restaurants will be working at hunger relief agencies, food banks, soup kitchens, and launching fundraisers.

"I think this is the highest contribution that I can make both to Google.org and to fighting the urgent threats of our day: from climate change to emerging infectious diseases, to issues of poverty and health care," says Brilliant. "By focusing my energy outwards I hope to be able to spend more time motivating policy makers, encouraging public and private partnerships, and generally advocating for the changes that we must make as a global society to solve these problems."

Megan Smith will be taking over as General Manager at Google.org. Brilliant also says Google will be putting more engineers and technical talent to work on issues. Could the move really be a way to both consolidate operations and look good doing it? This is the thinking of some bloggers, anyway.

"I wonder if this closer alignment between business aims and philanthropic ones couldn’t also be seen as an anti-recessionary measure," says Anya Kamenetz at Fast Company. "Profits fell for the first time last quarter and the Goog has gone through quiet cutbacks in perks and personnel."

Not a bad point.

"By putting the wildly popular Brilliant out on the road more as a brand evangelist, adding to Smith’s job description, and tapping more Googlers’ 20% time for do-gooder projects, Google gets to shine its image and build its business at the same time for less cash. Good thinking!" says Kamenetz.

Doing more good for less money can’t be a bad thing. Interesting projects Google.org has been involved with include Flu Trends, RechargeIT, Clean Engery 2030, and PowerMeter.

People were called upon to submit ideas of how to help as many people in the world as possible. Google would then select 100 of the best ideas, which would be voted on, narrowing it down to 20 semi-finalists, then to 5. $10 million would then be spread across the final five projects.

"We’re looking for ideas that help as many people as possible, in any way, and we’re committing the funding to launch them," Google said upon announcement.

Google had intended to reveal the finalists on January 21st, but received so many entries, they had to move this back a couple months. They will now announce them on March 17th, which is St. Patrick’s Day.

"The response we received has wowed and humbled us," says Google Creative Lab Managing Director Andy Berndt. "People sent in over 150,000 ideas, with submissions in all of the 25 languages for which we had a submission form. Proving that there is strength in numbers, many people submitted similar ideas for tackling big problems."

I for one am very interested to see the finalists. There’s a lot of money on the line for helping large amounts of people, and that is something to be excited about.

“I was surprised to discover that the month of December 2008 was an all-time high for charitable websites over the last three years, more than doubling traffic from Spring 2007,” writes Tancer, at the Hitwise blog.

That spike in charitable traffic, according Tancer’s graph, is inversely proportional to Dow Jones traffic. When DJIA traffic is way up, charity site traffic is way down, and vice versa. If you’re generally Pollyanna, like me on a good day, you want to say that as greed and individuality fails us we return to our sense of community and giving.

If you’re generally cynical, like me at my worst and most realistic*, you conjecture that as investments folded, failed investors began searching for open, bleeding hearts. Besides, visiting ain’t tantamount to giving, and everybody loves charity at Christmas anyhow.

Other numbers are equally as easy to spin. A recent Harris Interactive poll, conducted before Christmas, declared a more count-your-blessings type populace. Almost half of those polled said they were more likely to give a charitable gift as a present this year. Four in five said they’d prefer a charitable gift in their name in lieu of clothing or electronics for themselves.

Optimists’ response: We succeed individually but we suffer together.

Cynic’s response: You’d say the same thing if asked. Doing is something else.

While commenting on the survey, Harris’s SVP of pubic affairs and policy research, Justin Greeves, cites another study from The Center of Philanthropy at Indiana University’s Giving USA Foundation showing that total charitable giving has increased in 39 of the past 40 years—even during times of recession.

Unfortunately for those of us who want to be optimists, Greeves did a bit of data cherry-picking there. If you adjust the total for inflation, the numbers are a bit different, and giving fell an average of one percent in recession years, vastly more in periods of longer recession (9.3 percent from 1973-1975). Between June and December 2008, the Philanthropic Giving Index (PGI), a measure of nonprofit fundraisers’ confidence in the current fundraising climate, plunged by 27 percent, a decline tripling the previous record drop in 2001.

Source for that information: The Center of Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Well sometimes, especially at Christmas, one needs a little positive spin. But you won’t get any from economist Mark Reiboldt, founder of Reiboldt & Co., who reports even the deep pockets of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are receding toward the beltline as the richest of the rich feel the pinch.

But wait, it gets worse. Reiboldt writes:

“The numbers for declines in non-profit revenues are even more dramatic right now due to the Bernie Madoff scandal, which directly impacted investments by a significant amount of the country’s largest and oldest charities.  Large chunks of the $50 billion losses in Madoff’s ponzi scheme came from non-profit organizations and charities for whom Madoff’s firm was managing their investment capital.”

Optimist’s response: Oh dear. Well, We can only go up, right? We’ll make up for it in sweat equity. Volunteer today!

Cynic’s response: Silence, followed by gunfire.

^{*Though the dictionary will likely give you separate definitions for realism and pessimism, they operate in much the same way by dwelling on what is, what is not, and what is probable, the pessimist relying slightly more on Murphy’s Law. So I see little need to separate them from the synonym box. The optimist, on the other hand, is a fool, a Bohemian, and a believer in what is possible. Generally I like him better and let me say that the world has never been changed by a realist, pragmatist, or pessimist. That is, if you acknowledge the world has ever actually changed.}
 

RecentChangesCamp was born from the intersection of wiki and OpenSpace – a very wiki-like way of organizing gatherings. A lot of cool people into wiki, community and collaboration will be there – what do you want to talk with them about? Every participant is invited to lead their own sessions; the guideline is to take responsibility for what you love. In addition to general and technical conversations about – and actual coding on – wikis and other software, session topics from past RCCs have covered subjects from art to social organizing to philanthropy, playing a creative conversation game, and individual & group coding practices. See the past conference wikis for more complete lists and session notes.

Anyone and everyone is invited to attend. You will especially enjoy Recent Changes Camp, if you happen to be any of the the following:

    *      Member of any open wiki community or someone who uses wikis at work, school or in any other context
    * Interested in community, action, collaboration, creativity or any other activity in which the self-organizing power of wiki might be helpful
    *      Interested in the OpenCulture and/or OpenTechnology movements
    *      Interested in knowledge creation and sharing knowledge
    *      A generally curious and inquisitive person

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