Jumo launch just two weeks away, will a fundraising revolution follow?

It was more than six months ago when I first wrote about Jumo and how the co-founder of Facebook hoped that a new social media platform aimed to unite nonprofits with donors could potentially change everything we know about nonprofit fundraising services. Since that time I’ve been watching to see when more information about Jumo would be forthcoming and it’s been a bit of a wait.

Chris Hughes the executive director of Jumo was until now most renowned for his work in getting Facebook started, chances are that a year or two from now he may be most associated with Jumo; especially if the project achieves its broad goals. As was initially inferred that the concept is not to simply promote the largest and most recognised nonprofits but to create more even distribution of information and accessibility for smaller or regional organisations to best match them with potential donors. Hughes explains it as such:

“We’re all really sensitive about not just promoting the most popular organizations or the organizations that have a lot of name recognition. The reason we got into Jumo in the first place is we saw literally millions of small to medium-size organizations all across the world, and they had a much harder time struggling to adapt to the social Web than large organizations that have brand recognition, larger budgets, more capacity to invest.”

Not to be overly critical but they already failed in their first chance to connect with me, back in March I filled out an e-mail subscription to ‘keep me informed’ about future developments with Jumo and my inbox has been bereft of a response ever since. In fact I only learned about an official launch date via research rather than a follow-up response. Surely that was just a glitch and not an indicator. As it turns out the official public launch date is just two weeks away with the site going active on November 30, I’m excited to see if what they are proposing will be a dashboard or portal for nonprofits will be as intuitive as it should be. I’m guessing that it will look forward to testing it out in a few weeks and then reporting back to you. The ever expanding interfacing of social media means that the capabilities of the site could make it the most user-friendly tool that nonprofits have ever been associated with, pulling profile details from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and various other outlets will make registration a snap and customisation equally efficient if properly implemented. I’m sure that the previous six months have been spent refining the tool so that it works well out of the box so to speak. Hughes admits that there will be a period of time where users will use Jumo primarily for research and exploration which he feels is really part of what should be offered to any donor looking to connect with a nonprofit.

“We don’t expect people to come in and start by donating and end by donating. We expect people to be curious about a cause or an organization, and then over the course of a few weeks or a few months get to know that cause. Then at a point where they feel inspired or compelled or they feel that sense of responsibility, then we hope that they will take real action on behalf of those causes and for those organizations.”

Security and ethics in the online world are also a major priority for Hughes and he expressed in the interview that he feels a personal responsibility that any user on Jumo who donates can be positive that their contribution is going to legitimate source. As such I would expect to see a watertight process for vetting and monitoring activity within the platform. I look forward to writing about this more in December after taking it for a test run, I’m sure many of you will do the same and it be interested to hear your thoughts.

Chris Hughes interview with the Chronicle about Jumo