What makes an ecosystem work?

• Posted by Lucy Bernholz
• On October 10, 2008


• Interests: Social Media

This past Wednesday I moderated a session at the SSIR conference on Online Giving Marketplaces. My raw notes from that session are here.

Right now I am supposed to be preparing for another session at another conference, this one on Monday at the Social Capital Markets 2008 Conference (which I'll also blog about).

So, what makes an ecosystem - either of online giving marketplaces or social capital?

There were a dozen or so OGMs demo'ing their sites at Stanford, and perhaps a dozen or so more represented in the audience. Most of these marketplaces traffic in financial resources - matching donors/lenders to organizations/entrepreneurs. Others are markets for human resources (such as JustMeans), ideas (change.org) and technical assistance (GreaterGoodSouth Africa). How many of these can survive? How do they feed each other, or eat each other? What happens to innovations such as these when they become numerous and resources become tight?

Getting ready for the SoCap conference I realize I have some similar questions. What is social capital? Do all kinds of capital that fund some socially beneficial efforts qualify? Wouldn't that make any dollar of a philanthropic foundation endowment, invested in any financial vehicle, social capital? If so, then social capital has no meaning. So where are the limits? What are the different types of social capital in a social capital ecosystem? How do they relate to each other? What happens if one becomes more abundant than the system can support (or if one becomes extinct?)

 As you can see, I only have questions at this point. But it is worth noting that in both of these cases, OGMs and Social Capital, we now have enough, diverse representatives of players that we can even ask these questions. What do they add up to? What do they contribute in the aggregate? What do they need to survive - vis-a-vis other systems and others in their own ecosystem? I may have more answers after SoCap, but probably not, just more questions.
Either way, you can follow SoCap blogs through the delicious tag socap08. I'll be posting at philanthropy2173 and others are here.

• Tags: philanthropy,socap08,ssir,onine giving marketplaces

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