Interview with Dan Morrison, Founder of Citizen Effect: The Importance Of A Strong Advisory Board

By envisionGood | May 7 2010 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

This is Part II of a 4-Part series with Dan Morrison, Founder of Citizen Effect.

In this interview, Dan talks about his background and shares how it prepared him to launch Citizen Effect. In addition, Dan tells us about the talented and business-savvy advisors and mentors he relied on to develop Citizen Effect. In this interview, Dan also shares how projects published on Citizen Effect are vetted and tells us about one of the most memorable ways an citizen philanthropist used Citizen Effect to raise over three thousand dollars to build a well in India.

For Part I of this 4-Part series, be sure to check out, “Interview with Dan Morrison, Founder of Citizen Effect: How Citizen Effect Got Started”.

Thank you Dan for your time to meet for this interview.

Behind-The-Scenes: The Importance of a Strong Advisory Board – How Projects Are Vetted – How One Citizen Philanthropist Raised Three Thousand Dollars To Build A Well in India

Katrina: Thank you so much for joining. I’m here with Dan Morrison, the Founder of Citizen Effect.

Dan: Citizen Effect basically is a platform that empowers anybody to be a philanthropist.

Katrina: How do you vet projects that are published on your platform?

Dan: That’s one of the big issues that we have. And, I think, probably like every other organization – we find great organizations that are either referred to us, or ones that come to us. And then we put them through the due-diligence process. We look at their track record. We make sure we can understand the money flow, the information flow, and how you’re going to manage the project. We make sure that they’re a charitable organization, look at their board of governance…

Katrina: What is your background that prepared you to build this platform?

Dan: I came from a corporate consulting background. I did a lot with innovation strategy, brand and marketing strategy, and so I had never done international development before. I had this vision and idea for a business model and business plan and really had to rely on some great people to help me get there.

So folks like, my mentors at Profit, Michael Dunn and Scott Davis were fantastic. I got very lucky with our board chair Neel, who is an ex-lawyer and now in finance in New York and he helped with some really strong business sides. And lucky enough, his roommate in college was Michael Slaby who was the chief technology officer and new media director for the Obama campaign. So he became the architect for the technology model, along with everyone else on our board, Court Coursey who’s a brilliant business man and has helped us think through many of those issues and everybody else.

Katrina: Incredible. That’s fantastic. Clearly this model is empowering the people who it’s serving. But it’s also also empowering those who are taking part in the project. What kind of influence do you think that would have as a whole on the way we think about giving?

Dan: I think that’s the main part and I think, what we’re all about. And I get asked all the time, “how are you different than Kiva, and how are you different than Global Giving and other groups? The lightbulb didn’t do off for me or us or anyone on the team on how to build this business until we saw the reactions to people here at home. And the reality is, people don’t want to just give and forget anymore. They want to get directly involved. Fifty percent of the citizen philanthropists that go out and raise money for us, they repeat and they do another project.

Our hypothesis was that that would start when all the great information started coming in from India and Africa and the projects and people could see their impact. It actually started earlier. It started when people brought their friends and family together and had an amazing experience to do good together. And that got them so excited and motivated that they were like, “you know what? I want to do that again.” So, we’re really trying to re-build communities, both in poorer countries and poorer neighborhoods here in the States, and also here amongst ourselves, and bringing community building and civic engagement here at home.

Katrina: What have been some memorable impacts produced from these projects?

Dan: When we got the first report back, the first report said, “hey there’s a well in India that’s providing over five hundred people with drinking water”. That was am amazing experience, an amazing feeling. But honestly the one that made your hair stand up and brought tears to your eyes was the report that said one woman started a flower store and another woman started a flour mill because they’re not walking four hours a day for water. Being able to see that impact and know that you’re a part of it is not only a big motivating force to know you are part of that, but makes you re-think how you give, what you do, how you want to live your life. And I think that’s the real power behind the model.

Katrina: Fantastic. And speaking about impact, how do you track or measure or report the impact being made by these projects?

Dan: We have to agree that before we even begin to work with a partner they have the people, the organization, and the process in place in order to measure the impact of these projects. And that’s all set up from the beginning. But it’s so much easier for us to measure impact, because we’re building one well. So when we set up that proposal and project, the partner just knows that, “okay, great, I need to measure XYZ, how much water is coming out of the well, how many people go to it, how many women start businesses…” And since they already have a deep relationship with those communities, the reporting is really easy.

And so we are going to end up with these little packets of information that we can aggregate in different ways to know, okay, what’s the most effective water projects in India? Is it wells? Or is it actually water harvesting? And at the same time we’ll look at fundraisers here and we’re going to know okay, what’s the most effective way for a college student to raise two thousand dollars? Is it doing a 5K run? Is it doing a basketball tournament? Or is it having a sorority party? And knowing that data so that we can share that with others so that they can be more effective in their fundraising.

Katrina: And what has been the most outrageous way that a project has received funding to-date? Is there something extraordinary that you were like, “wow, I hadn’t thought of that, that’s really original”?

Dan: Well there are two and I want to give a shout-out to a buddy of mine who I call the “extreme citizen philanthropist”. We had a guy who took a trip to India. He went to Bandhwad Village, came home, and googled it. And we were one of the only sites he saw so he clicked on it, called us up and said, “hey I’m going to raise the thirty five hundred dollars for the latrines in Banwad Village. His name is Glenn.

And we were like, “Great! How are you going to do it?” And he says, “Well I’m going to ride my bike.” And I was like, “Great! Are you going to do a triathlon or a bike ride or what are you going to do?” And he said, “No, I’m actually going to ride my bike from San Diego to St. Augustine, Florida.” That’s three thousand ninety two miles. He had never heard of us before but he had the experience of being there and thought, “This is a platform that I can use to bring my friends and family and everybody I meet along the way together to be involved.”

To see our previous interview with Dan, Part I of a 4-Part series, be sure to check out “Interview with Dan Morrison, Founder of Citizen Effect, On Citizen Philanthropy”. Part III and Part IV will be our next posts – stay tuned!

Thank you Dan, for time to meet for this interview.

Dan Morrison | Founder, Citizen Effect

About: Citizen Effect provides citizens with the tools and networks they need to work directly with communities in need around the world, enabling every individual to be a citizen philanthropist. Website: www.CitizenEffect.org

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