Posted by Vicki Saunders on
April 28, 2008 – 8:14 pm
The idea for this platform has been brewing for a few years and finally, market timing helped it get pushed into action.
The three main reasons for building Zazengo stem from my learning about engagement strategies, the need for a common platform for the social sector and thirdly, the creation a market for social action.
Engagement 2.0
For the past 12 years I’ve been in meeting after meeting being asked by governments, corporations, NGOs, small companies, schools, parents, the same question:
How do you get young people engaged in “x”.
It doesn’t really matter what the issue is, someone, somewhere thinks you should be engaged in it. From the environment to water saving to cleaning up trails in the forest to empathy for others, you name it, we’ve got people trying to get more action in their area of interest.
How do you get young people interested in, for example, ‘their community’. At the beginning, I really engaged with these questions and created all kinds of programs and initiatives and curriculum. I experimented over the past decade with hundreds of different ways to engage people in whatever challenge someone else thought they should be engaged in.
Over time I realized: People are already engaged.
There is a wealth of activity and action and solving and experimenting going on all over the world, we just can’t see it because it’s small, diverse, and not connected.
And most organizations sit around a big board room table making up lists of things for people to do to get engaged and then they get stuck with the same three things: ask for money, protest or write a letter to a politician. In fact, it became so prevalent that these are now considered to be engagement strategies.
I think there are thousands more ways to get people engaged and it all starts with one thing – asking people what they are doing, followed by giving them the tools to tell you what they’re up to and finally, tracking the impact and feeding it back to the whole ecosystem.
Common platform
I also noticed that organization after organization were applying to get grants to build the same set of tools over and over for their communities and the question came up: what if we could build a common platform that could be shared across communities that allowed for individualized branding that was free for these exceptional non-profits. So we built our best version 1.0 with a number of leading non-profits, thinkers and activists. Now we are ready to open it up to co-create the next versions with your input.
Market for social action
And, last but not least came the question of a market for social action. Non-profits are completely reliant on donations. My firm belief is that all of this action has a huge value to society and it feels like the time is now to bring sponsors into the mix to create a whole new market for social action. Zazengo shares 50% of it’s revenues with the organizations who track their impact on our platform.
Zazengo is our way of connecting the small, and big, amazing, innovative, simple, everyday acts people take to improve their lives or follow their passion or attempt to just make some sanity out of what they see around them.
On a personal note, Zazengo is a way for me to track the things I do (mentoring and volunteering my time to new startups) and realize that all these little things add up. I used to say, “I don’t volunteer” because I had some preconceived notion of what volunteering was. Now I know better. I’m contributing all the time and the act of tracking it makes me realize the value I bring to this world. My little actions matter.
Welcome to Zazengo!
Vicki Saunders, CEO
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