Kopernik: New Social Enterprise Marketplace

The surge in the design movement for social change has sparked the creation of many social enterprises and products aimed at helping people in developing countries improve their lives. But how to keep track of them all? Or better yet, how best to match need to product?

That's where startup Kopernik comes in. Founded by two ex-UN staff members, Ewa Wojkowska and Toshi Nakamura, Kopernik is a marketplace for what the duo calls life-changing technology. Their site promotes matchmaking between NGOs and other social change organizations with specific needs and the makers and designers of products-for-good.

Here's how it works: anyone can go to the site and browse through a list of needs from NGOs, and -- if so inspired -- contribute in the form of microdonations to help those groups buy new-tech products, such as Lifestraws, that can help make life easier for low-income communities around the world. Kopernik also features a rating system that gives tech manufacturers a chance to hear from local groups about how their products are being used in the field and how to improve them. So far, Kopernik has formed partnerships with 12 tech organizations, 10 for-profits and 2 nonprofits.

According to Joshua Friedman, who recently profiled Kopernik for PopTech, the startup will help fill the gap between the production of great new "designs-for-good" and those communities around the world that need these new products. One example of how Kopernik works, Friedman writes, is a local NGO in East Timor that fights domestic violence and promotes gender equality. It registered with Kopernik, hoping to raise $4,990 on Kopernik's site, so that it can buy 30 Q-Drums, a donut-shaped, 50-liter water container that can help people transport water by rolling rather than by hoisting containers on one's head or shoulder. Nakamura told Friedman that he started thinking about starting up Kopernik after the 2004 tsunami hit Sri Lanka: the Q-Drum wasn't an option in a bucket-distribution program to help victims collect water.

So far, Friedman says, some200 local NGOs have applied to be part of Kopernik's network; the site vets them to make sure they're worthy recipients and that they can afford to distribute the products if they get them. Kopernik's list of technologies includes a compact solar-powered water treatment unit for the home, eyeglasses with corrective settings that can be adjusted by the user, and a solar-powered LED lantern.

What do you think? How else can online marketplaces help speed the delivery of innovation to the communities that need it the most? Let us hear from you.