My colleagues forwarded me your blog-post earlier today. I recently read your paper — Beyond Planning: Markets and Networks for Better Aid — with great interest.

I work at GlobalGiving (www.globalgiving.com), an online philanthropic marketplace. While we do not give out direct grants to organizations, one of our key goals is to provide access to the philanthropy market, to grassroots organizations like these. If the organization meets our due diligence criteria (see here: http://www.globalgiving.com/open), they are invited for a period of 4 weeks to post a project on the site. This provides them a customized unique project page with personalized fund-raising tools to reach new donors, and other partners. We provide on going support and training during this period.

Organizations can nominate themselves or Individuals can recommend organizations that they think might be interested in raising funds online. More details are available here: http://www.globalgiving.com/open. Please feel free to email me at mmehta at globalgiving dot com for any questions.

Best,
Manmeet

I always caution people before supporting orphanages. There are far too many orphanages that are not legally registered, are not overseen by the government, have children that are not actually orphans, and are not following best practices for caring for children separated from family.

There is so little information provided by the orphanage above that you have no way of knowing whether they are legitimately looking out for what is best for the children or themselves. I hate to be so critical but these are questions that really have to be asked.

I’ve blogged on the subject a few times:

http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/2009/06/does-funding-orphanages-create-ophans-.html

http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/2009/09/funding-orphanages.html