The rules are simple, Buchheit will only donate to IRS recognized, public charities, and he's asking people to suggest and vote on them through a Google Moderator app he's set up, and discuss ideas via a group he set up on FriendFeed (where he's a founder). He also hopes that people will avoid the temptation to game the system to help out their favorite charities.
"I'd like to see broad support (from real people, not spam accounts) along with some evidence that it's a good idea, and perhaps endorsements from knowledgeable people," he wrote on his blog.
Knowledge Sharing and the Crowd
Buchheit says ultimately he'll treat the crowd's contributions as recommendations and won't necessarily commit to giving his money to whichever ideas get the most votes. "I have a lot of ideas, but not much time, so I'm starting with the simplest solution that I could find. It may not work, but it should be interesting," he said.
It's fitting that Buchheit, who is both a major player in the social media space and the originator of Google's famous "don't be evil" mantra is using social media tools to guide his charitable giving. And he's right that the results of the experiment should be interesting.
In narrow terms, it should at the very least give Buchheit and other participants the chance to learn about and discuss a variety of charities without having to do the heavy lifting (of researching those charities) themselves, and it gives average people the exciting chance to influence the giving of a wealthy philanthropist. But more broadly, it's a proof-of-concept for future systems of knowledge sharing and collective decision making.