Bonfire
Project Bonfire
Project Bonfire was one of the first projects conceived by the Univicity leadership team. Project Bonfire’s vision is to mobilize and engage individuals, churches, foundations, businesses, and governments to work TOGETHER to make an impact and transform communities through technology. The Mission is to collaborate with industry leaders to develop and integrate an innovative suite of software and services that enable coordinated activities, optimized outputs, and maximized impact.
History
In March 2010, we gathered the first Bonfire Consortium of three leading mega-church networks. Each of these networks has been involved in Humanitarian projects on a large scale and understands the value of a software platform for coordinating the efforts of their teams. The Bonfire Consortium met again in October 2010 to see an Alpha version of the Project Bonfire platform.
One January 1, 2011, Univicity spun off Project Bonfire into a separate company. The Univicity management team believed the Bonfire Product and market opportunity required a unique focus that was better delivered through a new company. To follow the future progress of Project Bonfire, visit it’s website at: www.ProjectBonfire.com.
Project Bonfire: The Product
The bonfire network connects all aspects of the humanitarian aid community. From volunteers, and donors to relief causes, and less fortunate beneficiaries.
Bonfire engages prospective volunteers and contributors, by making the needs of the humanitarian sector more visible on facebook and other social media platforms. Users can announce their volunteer and donation efforts across other social media platforms and engages their friends and family to come alongside them to help. The result is a viral awareness of need across all non-profit organizations.
Further reading, visit: www.ProjectBonfire.com
World Vision Micro
In June 2009, Univicity was asked to consult on a World Vision US project to launch a Kiva-like site for their micro-finance program called Vision Fund. The primary requirement was a Sep-1, 2009 launch date, giving us only 3 months to find the right software, perform the technical due diligence, negotiate a price, convince senior management, buy the software, install it and pilot the application.
Another key requirement was that the software needs enable one-or-more donors to sponsor a specific entrepreneur. In addition, the software needs to allow field operations staff to enter information about the borrower and provide periodic loan and impact reports directly to the donor.
Given the time and scope requirements, there was only one choice. We would need to license Opportunity International’s OptInNow software. Rather than viewing World Vision as a competitor, Opportunity took a broader industry perspective and made a decision to license the software to World Vision. In my personal opinion, this was one of the most selfless acts in the NGO industry–an industry that rarely collaborates, but rather competes vigorously for donors. I’m very proud and grateful to have been part of the technology transfer between these two respected non-profits.
The end result? World Vision launched www.WorldVisionMicro.org on September 1, 2009. The site has helped thousands of entrepreneurs in developing countries obtain micro-finance loans that will change their lives and impact their communities.
Univicity believes this kind of social networking enabled donor-to-field software will raise the bar on Humanitarian IT. Non-profits that utilize this kind of software will become part of the NGO 2.0 movement, enabling their organizations to reach a new breed of donor that requires transparency, accountability and connection.
Spark
Click on the image to view the Spark presentation
One of the first Univicity projects was to create the Spark Humanitarian Suite presentation in partnership with World Vision International. The goal of “Spark” was to capture the high-level requirements for a modern Humanitarian IT System and explain it to a diverse audience using multi-media in 10 minutes. The Spark presentation covers fundraising to field-management for a typical international NGO.
The purpose of the presentation was to stimulate (“spark”) the conversation amongst Humanitarian organizations to collaboratively build Humanitarian IT systems that would enable NGO’s to move beyond their current circa-1980 field operations systems.
You can watch the Spark presentation by clicking here, then pressing the play button at the bottom of the opening display.
The Spark presentation has three components:
- A brief problem statement. What is wrong with the current Humanitarian IT systems today?
- A story. An overview of the proposed technology told from the perspective of a child in India who loses her family during a Tsunami, but over the course of 15-years, helps transform her community.
- The technology. A brief overview of each part of the proposed Spark system.
The SPARK architecture of consists of seven integrated systems, which are used by Donors, NGO’s and Community Leaders to collaboratively design, monitor/implement, and evaluate humanitarian projects worldwide. SPARK is designed to be a Cloud Computing application and will be deployed in partnership with a global Cloud Services vendor. SPARK will also be released with 3rdparty applications designed to take advantage of the SPARK architecture.
1. Social networking platform. All other systems are integrated on top of the social networking platform through well-defined API’s.
2. e-Commerce system
3. Project Manager & Experience Library.
4. Donor system
5. The Program Design System
6. The Field Monitoring System
7. Project Evaluation system.
These seven SPARK systems work together to exponentially enhance the capacity and efficiency of donors, NGO’s and community leaders to collaboratively transform poor communities into self-sustaining communities.
The (L) Learning Management System is an add-on module.
Univicity is working with independent software developers to assemble and integrate the entire suite.
Windows IT Pro: A 15-year perspective
I was given the opportunity to write an article for the September 2010 issue of Windows IT Pro, a magazine I founded in 1995. In my 15-year perspective article, I talk about the launch of the magazine and provide a few stories along the way. I wrap up the article with where I think the industry is going.
I find it rewarding that the magazine is still going after 15 years. Many technology magazines have ceased publishing, so its amazing that our “formula” still works today.
Spark Conference
As Sabre is to the airline industry, Spark is to humanitarian industry.
Imagine a day when each airline had their own reservation system. We all relied on travel agents to navigate different computer systems just to book a flight. In the early 70′s, American Airlines teamed up with IBM and created the Sabre system. It was one of the first computerized reservation and ticket transaction systems. Originally used only by AA, the system was expanded to travel agents in 1976. It is currently used by a large number of companies, including Eurostar and SNCF. Today the system connects more than 30,000 travel agents and 3 million consumers with more than 400 airlines, 50 car-rental companies, 35,000 hotels and dozens of railways, tour companies, ferries and cruise lines. This evolved into ACP (Airlines Control Program), and later to TPF (Transaction Processing Facility). American spun off Sabre on March 15, 2000. Sabre was publicly traded corporation, Sabre Holdings, stock symbol TSG on the NYSE until taken private in March 2007.
Today, all non-government organizations (NGO) use different systems for Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation (DM&E). Each year, billions of dollars are donated by individuals, businesses, and governments through NGO’s to reach the end beneficiaries. Unfortunately, there is no standards for reporting impact, so it is impossible for donors to get a consolidated report of their donation impact across multiple agencies. In effect, the non-profit industry is where the airline industry was in 1972.
On March 11, 2008, World Vision one of the leading NGO’s ($2B/year) gathered together 15 organizations to discuss the possibility of developing an inter-agency DM&E system that would benefit the entire non-profit industry. If successful, the system (code named “Spark”) would enable all non-profits the ability to capture impact data into a common platform and report back to donors. It is believed that providing higher quality and more transparent impact reports to donors will increase accountability and ultimately result in higher donations to the organizations that provide this information to it’s donors.
Creative Capitalism
Bill Gates at WEF 2008
Bill Gates talks about Halftime, the pause between his Life 1.0 (Microsoft) and Life 2.0 (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). He starts full time at Gates Foundation in July 2008.
His talk is the role of the Corporation in the World.
Some points:
The world is getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough and it’s not getting better for everyone. There are a billion people that live on less than $1 day. Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need. Capitalism needs to be refined so that it benefits everyone. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a for those that can pay, philanthropy benefits the poor who cannot pay.
Recognition is an added incentive to for-profit companies in lieu of payment–the market will reward companies that are recognized for doing good. This is creative capitalism. Profit for self-interest + recognition for corporate philanthropy = creative capitalism.
Examples:
- President Bush signed the Priority Review. For those drug companies that come up with a solution for a “forgotten” disease, will get a priority review. Getting their state-of-the-art drug first priority in the FDA approval process. This could be a $100M
- Get African coffee farmers the right market for their product.
- Bono’s Red campaign was born in Davos, which has generated $50M for Aids in Africa.
Bill Gates encouraged all corporation to use Creative Capitalism–give their top thinkers a percentage of their time & talent. He says this is better than cash, because it taps into the brain power. Glaxo-Smith Klien & Sumocomo are example. If companies in a sector simply matched what the leader in that
NGO’s can create measurable s to measure & recognize non-profit organizations. By recognizing non-profits, we can encourage the creative capitalism movement.
The largest companies can have the biggest impact. It’s engineering your product so that the product can reach the lowest 1/3 of the population. It has to be promoted by the CEO and become part of the DNA. When it becomes part of the DNA, it will drive itself within a company. “A computer for everyone.” Microsoft’s slogan drives innovation.
A company should stick to what it knows well. The company’s mission and philanthropy should be tied together.
The idea of NGO’s getting cash directly from corporations is not the best solution. NGO’s need to ask for innovation, something that goes with their core products & services. Also, NGO’s have traditionally suspected that for-profit companies need to do everything for free, when in fact, it’s OK for them to make money somehow in the process.
Bill Gates would like to see his legacy be: Within 15 years, I would like to see 15 diseases wiped out. Huge changes in the mortality rates, which changes the birth rate and makes education possible. We’re spending $3B/year.