Saturday, June 1, 2013

The Riches Of Civic Capitalism

images (1)There’s a reason why eBay founder Pierre Omydiar just shoveled $15 million in investment to political petition site, Change.org: the business of good citizenship is very profitable. While critics often stereotype tech billionaires as libertarian sociopaths, they do so under the odd premise that making money and promoting democracy are mutually exclusive. From gun safety technologies to broadband for isolated African villages, people will pay good money, in the form of taxes, investment, or cash, for innovations that solve long-standing social ills. Voting is only one form of Good citizenship. There’s Money In Civic Capitalism According to TechCrunch’s own database of tech firms and startups, CrunchBase, investors have funnelled $28 million into the burgeoning sector of civic startups, startups whose sole focus is the enhancement of the democratic process. Here’s a few of the most notable Change.org (Petitioning Platform): +15,000,000 Mindmixer (Idea Crowdsourcing): 6,200,000 CitySource (311 Alerts): 1,300,000 SeeClickFix (311 Alerts): 1,500,000 Change.org, the most profitable of the sector, makes money largely from their lucrative database of citizen interest and featured petitions. Knowing exactly who to target and getting their attention is the lifeblood of civic groups–and they’re happy to pay for a service that promotes their mission. “The nature of non-profit funding and governance makes it much more difficult to move quickly and access sufficient resources” Change.org Founder Ren Rattray tells me in an email “After founding Change.org with the intention of being a nonprofit, it quickly became clear that we would better serve our mission of empowering people everywhere by being a mission-driven company instead.” And, this isn’t even to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in energy, health, and campaign tech that also double as civic engagement tools, such as Organizer, which helps optimize neighborhood petitions like UPS routes trucks. Collaboration, The Good Kind While handing over the democratic process to a for-profit institution might seem like an invitation for corruption, agencies around the country have been happy to augment their outreach with civic enterprises. Mindmixer, a unique polling startup from my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, works with governments to hold virtual town halls. Mindmixer keeps a running tally of citizens’ implemented suggestions, which span everything from transitioning government cars to compressed natural gas to credit card enabled parking meters. The White House’s widely popular WeThePeople platform is now actively seeking out partnerships third-party platforms (like Change.org) to extend their reach. In other words, they don’t

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/kcLhftKRf0E/

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