Steven Pearlstein’s column describes GlobalGiving, which is looking to hook up small donors with international aid projects. Interesting numbers, they’be raised $1.5M from 2000 donors, that’s about $750 per donor. It’s also a great example of the wisdom that’s in crowds:
On its Web site, GlobalGiving provided brief descriptions of 112
development projects, asking site visitors to rank them on a scale of 1
to 10. About 50,000 individuals generated 200,000 evaluations.
Simultaneously, a much smaller group of several hundred aid experts was
asked to perform the same task. Of the 12 projects chosen by the
experts, nine were also chosen by popular vote.