

Humanitarian Crowdfunding Thread - Beehivefund

Join our Humanitarian Crowdfunding Discussion!<p>We’re new to Hacker News and want to cultivate a discussion about Humanitarian Crowdfunding and the open-source crowdfunding platform we’re building.<p>My colleagues and I are former United Nations staff and veteran humanitarian actors, we’re passionate about shortening the turn-around time and effort it takes professional-level humanitarian organizations to develop, launch and sustain operations, and we’re building a unique new crowdfunding platform to serve the humanitarian community. You can see our twitter feed at @BeehiveFund and a rough pitch deck at http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vimeo.com&#x2F;98176476.<p>What’s cool is that we’re a totally nonprofit all-volunteer initiative bringing hackers, humanitarian actors and others  together to build a platform that continuously adapts to user input and needs arising from the field. If a humanitarian group requires the ability to crowdfund via SMS or wants to channel cash-aid disbursements directly to refugees – we sort it out and do it, and integrate the capability!<p>This is the way to build the future of crowdfunding for humanitarian campaigns, through kick-ass open source development and real user engagement right?
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nowarninglabel
Could you explain what BeehiveFund offers over existing resources, such as
Indiegogo?

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Beehivefund
What we’re aiming to provide professional-level humanitarian actors is an
opportunity to separate their appeals from the mishmash of different
'charitable' campaigns out there and a platform they can own, improve and use
as a developmental test-bed.

Crowdfunding is capable of reshaping the fundraising landscape impacting
humanitarian operations. But there’s no incentive for popular platforms like
Indiegogo to stake out and work with humanitarian actors to innovate
humanitarian operational financing.

For example the humanitarian development community uses OECD CRS purpose codes
to classify giving. It wouldn't take Indiegogo anything to bring standardized
reporting in use across the humanitarian community down to the crowdfunding
level but there's no incentive to even learn what these codes are or how
they're useful.

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sharemywin
I hope your project goes well.

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Beehivefund
Thanks! We just gave a talk on our project at a Humanitarian Innovation
conference at Oxford. Folks are really excited.

