Crowdrise is a crowdfunding platform which enables people to raise funds for refugees, friends facing medical emergencies, education costs, and just about any cause about which someone (and likely many others) cares deeply.
The founders of Crowdrise are Edward Norton, Shauna Robertson, Robert Wolfe, and Jeffrey Wolfe.
Yes, the same Edward Norton of Fight Club and Grand Budapest Hotel.
You might not have known that in addition to acting, Edward Norton is a history scholar and a serial investor. In his recent interview with Tim Ferriss, Edward Norton shares great insights that are relevant our own community here at HeroX.
The interview begins with Norton describing the process of struggle, and how the elements of challenge and uncertainty are, often, pretty good indicators that you are doing something interesting. The logic supporting is that if you’re comfortable and coasting, you’re probably not growing.
This bit of advice is particularly relevant to HeroX Challenge Creators and Innovators because of the huge role that uncertainty plays in incentive prizes -- and how key that risk is to the big payout. Our Challenges are unique crowdfunded community quests into the unknown, where the money is not the end goal, but instead, the destination lies in the highest innovation and ground-breaking discovery.
Norton goes on to describe social inequity and the growing concentration of resources and capital, as access to both becomes increasingly difficult for most. As wealth seemingly consolidates around a smaller number of people in the world, many safety nets for the most disenfranchised citizens are weakened, or disappearing altogether. The narrative of a widening economic gap is only gaining validity, as it drives much of the dialogue around the current US Presidential race.
He also goes into detail that while this economic lopsidedness continues to worsen, the participatory and self-empowered global citizens of the internet are really beginning to learn how they can mobilize against injustice and financial limitation.
People can rally together, assemble resources, and address serious problems with incredible speed relative to the processes of the past. Norton goes on to describe the potency of dozens, hundreds, and thousands of people rallying behind a cause, all for about 25 dollars a piece -- which is the exact scenario after which Crowdrise was modeled. Like never before, people can respond to an issue that concerns them with confidence that their action, no matter how modest, will aggregate for a massively multiplied impact.
Norton describes how crowdfunding not only bypasses the familiar bulky bureaucracies, but the self-organization of people allows them to act in a much more direct and precise way that is less cumbersome than even many NGOs and political action committees. Put bluntly: informed, crowd-based action, facilitated by technology, is the 21st-century expression of performing community and civic duty.
Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote in his book, Democracy in America:
“In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members...people wield immense influence...often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.”
In the US and all around the world, people are using connectivity to go beyond the physical limits of their community; to see a problem and then to act to resolve it. This is self-organization and empowered action, as opposed to a passive critique. This was something De Tocqueville saw 200 years ago, and it is still thriving in a remarkably noisier, more crowded world.
When their financial capacity does not limit people's potential to affect change, everyone can create leverage toward building greater justice for all. These platforms are distinct tools that let people take collaborative, exponential action without all the logistical costs and organizational structure that was necessary just a few years ago, and this is just the beginning.
