Welcome to Crowdaroo. This blog post will attempt to explain our vision for Crowdaroo, and its mission statement. Since I do not profess to have talent of a good writer, and since Crowdaroo is about a collective crowd – Feel free to receive editing privileges and re-write this more eloquently. There is a Charitable Component to Crowdaroo, and also a commercial aspect. Please read about both, there is something for EVERONE. Should you share our vision, you are welcome to participate in either, or both.
Crowdaroo.org;
I have always wanted to be philanthropic. Regretfully my finances preclude me from making a difference in a meaningful way. Like most people, I donate as I am able, but usually in amounts that alone make hardly a drop in the bucket. I also prefer to donate to people directly. Though maybe I am over critical, I believe that many charities have become “fat” with expenses, and bureaucracies.
The vision for Crowdaroo.org (the charitable arm of Crowdaroo) is to become a group of many (the ultimate goal to have at least one million members). Once we have enough “like minded” individuals, we will have achieved phase 1.
The second phase will be to self fund what we hope to be limited expenses for Crowdaroo.org going forward. Regretfully, there will always be some expense, even if Crowdaroo’s goal is to keep them minimal. Expenses I envision will be the cost for an attorney and accountant to qualify as a legitimate charity. Hopefully the only other expense will be the cost to build, host and maintain a web presence (it is my hope that someone/s in the crowd might even be able to donate these services).
Phase 3 is for our crowd to collectively identify something/someone to contribute to. Though I am certain that donating to the red cross, or other already existing charities is important – The vision for Crowdaroo will be to touch someone directly. This might be donating money to someone whose child has been hospitalized, and they can not pay the bills. It might also be someone who lost their job, and are in jeopardy of loosing their home. The commonality here, is that we are able to directly impact someone that we all collectively have identified, and voted on together. More importantly is that the Crowdaroo platform is “mean and lean” allowing for the money to go DIRECTLY to someone who needs it, and not polluted by fund-raising expenses and bureaucracies. The beauty of this? Your $1 might not have gone a long way, but collectively it will go to work in chunks of $50,000.00 , $100,000 (however large the crowd becomes). AND you will learn about and know about the person first hand who is the ultimate recipient! How rewarding is that? You need not donate a nickel yet, simply join the crowd. When we reach a scale were we can make a differance, we’ll let you know. At that time, you may chose what amount, if any, you wish to contribute – and participate fully in the democratic process that Crowdaroo entails.
Crowdaroo.com;
Just like Crowdaroo.org, Crowdaroo.com is based on the “power of the crowd” to accomplish things we otherwise could not do on our own. Crowdaroo.com’s vision is to be able to harness a group of people to help you out when you need it – and that you can help, when the crowd calls upon you. This might be when you need help getting your message out, and want to call upon Crowdaroo to “RE-Tweet” something. It could be asking the crowd to comment on a really great blog post you wrote. It might also be about something more personal – Perhaps your 4th grader needs sponsors for a charitable walk-a-thon he or she is participating in. Exactly what the crowd will and will not do will ultimately be decided by…you guessed it, the crowd. Until this time (when more formal guidelines are drawn up), we ask that you use common sense in your requests to the crowd. For example, you can not SPAM the crowd. You should not ask the crowd to “Digg” something for you (this would ruin the integrity not only of Crowdaroo, but of Digg as well). So use common sense. Lastly, we ask that when someone who is part of Crowdaroo asks something of you, you provide for them, as you would want them to do for you.
To get started, please follow www.twitter.com/crowdaroo
Send Crowdaroo a Direct Tweet and in the Tweet state “Crowdaroo.org”, or “Crowdaroo.com” or “Both”
Once you follow Crowdaroo on Twitter, you will have full access to viewing any of it’s Tweets – currently set to private.
If you have questions/comments or would like to participate you can contact me (until other’s join);
Andrew Finkle / andrew.finkle@gmail.com / www.twitter.com/A_F / Phone (NYC) 646-714-3209
