Exploring HelpMatch Value
Value Proposition Through Scenarios
Let’s explore the HelpMatch value proposition through scenarios or vignettes describing how HelpMatch could be used. I would like to get to more vivid stories, but here’s a start that will seed ideas. Please remember that we are in vision exploration here. We try to be specific and vivid, to be compelling and explore possibility. But we will need to go through scoping to set system bourdaries and feature sets for early versus later releases. Then we will need to refine our understanding still further. We are explicitly encouraging exploratory, out-of-the box thinking at this point.
After the Tornadoes
Tornadoes hit communities across the Midwest and Southeast killing at least 20 people, including 8 high school students. What can anyone do, and how could HelpMatch help?
How about this: a family member or friend of someone impacted by the tornadoes gets on to HelpMatch and forms a “project” (we will settle on tags later) to co-ordinate assistance. For those who lost homes and possessions, it might be easier to see how we can help: the project coordinator can enter needs and establish credibility through their network, and their network’s network, and out as far as trust and the desire to help reaches.
On the need fulfillment side, one way this could work is as follows: Those who want to help, can go to HelpMatch, and register to be reached through the links in their network to a source of need associated with the tornadoes. (This will test out the theory that it only takes 5 links to reach someone else!) Then they can search the entered needs and decide how to help–with items they already have to donate, or by coordinating a drive to collect/fund these items. For example, my kids school could sign up to replace books or a computer, or other equipment lost in the school hit by the tornado.
For those who lost loved ones it might be harder to imagine what we can possibly do. But to the extent that anyone can figure out what could be done to help, in little and big ways, that person could form a project to co-ordinate that help. The project can be local, and co-ordinate care being provided by a close group of family members and friends. Things like meals, providing childcare relief for younger siblings. And it can be bigger, and more distributed–helping to raise funds to help the family with counseling and with time off from jobs, or using the network to put the families in touch with grief counselors and other families who have lost a teenager and who have found ways to cope with the loss, and so forth.
The point is, as soon as we have “the obvious place to go” on the internet, and a set of tools for individuals, communities, organizations to form “help projects” or “sponsored networks” to coordinate needs and matching help, then we have a powerful mechanism for help to assemble as needed by the situation! And if we have a ready community of technical people, then as new ways to serve needs emerge, we can act to put the tools to support that help mechanism in place. So the HelpMatch solution set can grow organically as we envisage the full power of help networks through actually using help networks to match help to need–all over the world!
Room to Read
Let’s take another situation. One where an individual forms a help community to raise funds or goods for an established organization, like Room to Read. Say “Maybel” wants to raise the funds needed for Room to Read build a school in Nepal; she could use HelpMatch as the rendezvous point for the help community she forms and champions.
She would create a project page. Then she could:
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tell the compelling story of the need for the school, maybe even put pictures or video clips on the project profile
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use her project page as a bulletin board for announcements about the project
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put a blog on the project space, to keep her help community up-to-date on developments, and to allow her community to comment and offer her suggestions, etc. (what a concept! chuckle)
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put a donations button, and a “how we’re doing against target” gauge showing level of donations to date, on the project page
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get visitors to that region to stop by the village where the school will be built, and get “on-the-ground” stories and photos, to make the story still more compelling and keep it right up-to-date with what is happening as the school gets built
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broadcast an invitation to join her project to her network of friends on HelpMatch, and email her network of friends not yet on HelpMatch
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make her project open, so any of her friends could broadcast to their friends, and on through the extended network, finding people to help make the dream of a new school real for a village that desperately needs one
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put an icon to sell John Wood’s book on the project page, set up so that the Amazon Associates (or other) referral fee goes to Room to Read.
And I’m sure Maybel would come up with lots of other good things she could do, with the help of some technical friends, to rally her extended network around her cause and give them concrete ways to make a difference to it.
HelpMatch: Tools for the Help Community
HelpMatch will put quite sophisticated on-line community tools, as well as the ability to manage an inventory of donated goods or services, in the hands of help projects (individuals, and individuals working on behalf of individuals or organizations). It is like giving ad hoc as well as more formal help projects an IT staff!
Room to Read keeps overhead absolutely barebones so that it has an extraordinarily high proportion of donated funds going to the cause rather than the organization that supports the cause. HelpMatch would give people, and even organizations like Room to Read, the online community space tools that they would not otherwise have, due to their focus on keeping administrative and fund raising costs low. Then not only can Room to Read have more information, coordination and network marketing support to raise funds for their good work, but other organizations who have invested proportionately more in fund raising could use HelpMatch to reduce their costs and have a bigger portion of their donated dollar go to the cause they serve.
Exploring Other Scenarios
We welcome other ideas on how HelpMatch could:
i. directly, personally help individuals who need help
ii. provide support to individuals and groups who are trying to help individuals or groups in a situation of need.
Craig Cody said,
March 16, 2007 @ 7:40 am
Perhaps the HelpMatch network can also help from a security perspective. I would expect that there would be those in a position to assist who might be looking for some kind of assurance that they weren’t falling victim to some kind of fraud.
This risk of fraud could be mitigated by the network. Resources within the network having earned a “trustworthy” reputation, might vouch for project in need. One need only look to eBay for a “trust” metaphor. How do you know that you won’t be ripped off on eBay? You don’t. But there is a “feedback score” for buyers and sellers. Epinions.com could serve as another metaphor.
Those projects in need that are worthy could separate from those that are not on the vetting done by the network.
Ruth said,
March 16, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
Yes! You put it so well!
It is going to be really exciting thinking these trust mechanisms through, and building them. There’s precedent (I like the eBay metaphor), and new ground to break on this.