WeCare: Crowd-sourcing Platform for Charity Projects

Abstract Donating goods, money, and participating in volunteering works are vital around the world. However, our user study shows that participates lose passion due to the lack of transparency and lack of information on the impact of their contribution. We introduce WeCare, a crowd-sourcing platform for charity projects that empower the crowd from existing social networks to participate in real actions. Each project consists resources such as goods, money, and voluntary works. For goods, WeStamp is a novel way to allow the crowd benefits from its tracking and extra caring information. Also, the receiver can use the real stamp inside to send thank-you card back. For money, WeCoin allows the crowd to donate to specific cause. For voluntary work, WeInvolve is an instant way for the crowd to become volunteers and send geo-tagged reviews. WeCare also gives the crowd a novel notification of bumping into various caring projects nearby. This allows the crowd to

walk by projects or even participate in them. Keywords Crowd sourcing, charity, digital volunteerism, collaboration, design, incentive, mobile, social network, location-based service, ACM Classification keywords H.5.2. User Interfaces: User-centered design. H.5.3 Groups & Organization Interfaces—collaborative computing, computer-supported cooperative work. H.3.5 Online Information Services: Web-based services Introduction Donations of goods and money, and volunteers from charities are most common and easiest way to help each other. However, the use of the resources remains unknown. For goods supplies, they are needed in various areas (e.g. books for the poor). With the traditional charities approach, goods are often too over estimated which later on become trash causing resource waste. The donors wouldn’t know if the goods are helpful or get miss used.

In monetary donations, 67 percent of donors plan to eliminate or reduce support to nonprofits that over-solicit [1] and over 70% of the first year donors wouldn’t retain the donation the following year [2], which means participates have lost their motivation throughout charity work. Obviously, the donors face a tremendous drawback after donations. In voluntary work, it’s difficult to find people with certain skills when the help is needed. Also, volunteers couldn’t easily support time and skills. These both sides have a strong need to link to each other. However, the traditional charities haven’t provided a platform to connect them.

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).

CHI’13, April 27 – May 2, 2013, Paris, France. ACM 978-1-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/XX.

Yu-Hsiang, Andy, Tseng National Taiwan University Mechanical Engineering b01502075@ntu.edu.tw Yi Tsung Lee National Taiwan University Mechanical Engineering b01502100@ntu.edu.tw

Yi Yu Wang National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Industrial design yiyu510@gmail.com

Figure 1. a) Action starters start a project. b) Supporters join the project. c) Stick WeStamp on the goods to have a better transparency. Or use WeCoin for transparent donations d) Goods and money get to the care-receiver. If the project is in progress, WeInvolve notifies the supporters and nearby crowd, and checks the location for them to update their real reviews.

In all, without a clear transparency, detailed information and well communications of charity projects, the crowd doubts the resources can be used properly and build contributions. Also, the coverage of the traditional helping system is classified and limited by traditional charities. However, the helpless ones out of the coverage remain helpless. This means the traditional system can’t fundamentally solved the problem.

Trying to solve the following problems and encourage the crowd’s motivation is a great challenge. After researching the previous studies, we adapt these theories into our design and bring it to our platform. In 1979, with the prospect theory [7], it remarkably predicts that a clear and transparent charity project can trigger supporters’ motivation. Also, a study shows peer-pressure can motivate the willingness of helping and the “crowd effect” is remarkably strengthened in helping others and charity work. [8]

From existing crowd, there are over one billion users on Facebook [5]. In fact, the crowd depends on these social network systems to share and get information including news, social issues, and events. They update status to obtain others’ attention about their perspectives or the issues they motivated. With wide population, these social behaviors, and the “crowd effect” in charity work, we decide to start with Facebook.

As a result, using these methods, we create WeCare providing users more transparency and detail information, which allows each user to easily participate and build out projects, regardless of its scale, huge or small, to help the ones ignored by the charities. Inside projects, we empower the crowd to donate goods and money, and also volunteer. Donating goods, WeStamp allows the crowd to track down every item with extra caring information included. WeStamp also contains a real stamp, which the receivers can send real thank-

you card back to the supporters. Donating money, WeCoin allows the crowd to specify their donation. To volunteer, WeInvolve enables the crowd to volunteer instantly and send localized reviews bringing out a huge transparency. Using WeCare with mobile and location information, it is beneficial to make the crowd participates charity project with novel interactions and strengthen their motivation with the help of collaboration.

Related work: Kickstarter and Ushahidi In crowd founding, Kickstarter, a website for startup social funding, allows entrepreneurs to start projects and collect fund from individuals. A transparent project with clear identity, meaningful proposes, and detailed information is often funded the most. We leverage this technique and adapt it to charity. In charity, not only funding but also goods and volunteers are needed. Also, to bring more transparency, we need different tracking systems. Specifying Kickstar’s method to charity, we empower the crowd the ability to start care projects, support them, receive help and send back feedback, and participate whenever they’re nearby.

Ushahidi is a crowd-sourcing mobile information network. From Following the crowd, “over the last few years, Ushahidi has been used by organizations to monitor local elections in India, map incidences of violence in Pakistan, and track medicine shortages in the Philippines.”[9] Ushahidi is used both effective and wide range. Adapting the idea of mobile application and location-based interaction, we enable the crowd to check our platform by scanning the code in delivering the goods and volunteer events. This brings the platform a wide range of transparency, and sense of discovery.

User Study We investigated the essential reasons of the lack of continual participation of the crowd. After interviewing several experiential donors, we realize more of their

viewpoints on charity subjects. To questionnaires, we have designed a survey about social issue participation and donation for the crowd to answer. The survey includes the question to know the reason why the crowd wouldn’t support the organizations they used to participate in, and the question to know how the crowd thinks about the current system of charity organizations that lead them not to support them. 70 participants answered the survey. Most of them aged from 18~30, and 60 of them have the experience of charity participation or been a donor. After analyzing the interviews from these participates, we have found two major factors that matter.

• The crowd is not sure whether the current charity organizations work as they expected. When they are asked about whether they know how their donations are used, most of them don’t realize what happens to their donation. “After donating, I still don’t know if the charity use the money for helping Haiti or not,” from participate A.

• The crowd doesn’t think these charity organizations can really help many people in need since they really don’t know how their support are distributed and used.

The results have indicated that the lack of transparency of real use of donation has caused the low rate of continuous participation and even caused the crowd not willing to join these activities. Without realizing the effect and the benefit of their donation, it is reasonable to find out that the crowd eliminates their motivation and participation in charity.

Also based on the survey, we have found out some key factors, which motivate the crowd to help each other.

• Many participants have agreed that even just a card from the ones they helped or a picture of recovery because of their donation really make them happy

and would gain a sense of self-achievement and increase their motivation. Participants noted “the thank-you card really made my day.”

• Most participants also agreed that they are easily affected by the crowd around. If the crowd around them also takes part in some charity projects, they are more willing to join them.

• If charity projects can show more transparency and detail information, including more of their contribution, more measureable results, and do better management practices, they would like to involve more in charity work. For example, participate A said “It would be better if I can see my project really helps.” ”If I know more about what the charity is actually doing, I think I’ll participate more,” from participant C.

Proposed Solution Our proposed solution is WeCare, a mobile caring project platform designed for all kinds of charity work. To bring out more transparency, we decided to give the crowd incentive feedback by creating new interactions in both reality and the mobile app. Also, we use a persuasive technique [4] and mobile interaction to trigger the users’ sense of participation. To ensure real projects progressing in real location, we bonded the platform with mobile devices.

Design Goals Our main focus is on reinventing the perspective of charity projects to let the crowd understand how their help influences the world. We enhance the trust of charity groups by giving each project a complete transparency. We adopt the strategy of social networking to trigger the crowd’s motivation of giving help. Also, we tried to change the traditional single-way support and build a strong connection between the supporters and the receivers. A secondary goal is to ensure the projects are real validated by the crowd. Here we enlisted the detail approaches:

Figure 3. First prototype a) By hitting the plus, action starters can simply start a project. b) By hitting the search bar, the crowd can easily search projects, locations, and previous projects of users c) By hitting the menu, the crowd can find projects in a detailed and categorized way d) By hitting the star, the crowd can easily follow the project, and easily see the resources needed inside the project.

• We care about all human beings. Our solution must be simple enough to meet user’s common daily activities.

• WeCare platform must be flexible enough to achieve all kinds of caring projects, including goods tracking, money for specific cause, and voluntary work interactions.

• WeCare focus on real actions, which mobile phones are essential to serve as a location tracker. Also, WeCare platform must give the crowd the ability to check if the projects are taken in reality.

• WeCare must enable the crowd to join from the existing major social networks and empower the crowd to encourage each other to help.

Design Process Based on gathered information and study of existing systems, we sketch our design process for the prototyping of WeCare, including user types, platform structures, and mobile app.

User Types After researching different traditional charities’ experiences and gathering various roles in different projects, our team defines user types reflecting the four types people in the crowd that can participates in WeCare by giving help, receiving the help and getting notified. We have identified four classes of the crowd:

• The action starters, who mainly gather the detailed information, collect the need and conduct which projects should be taken (through field surveys, interviews and meetings)

• The supporters, who determined if the projects are correct and worth applying, and follow the projects guidelines to give help to the care-receivers

• The care-receivers, who get the help from the projects and are encouraged to give a thank-you cards on WeCare app or mail in reality.

• The nearby crowd, who get notified that the cares are happening, and could check if the cares are accurate and taken in reality.

We gathered these user types to build interactive relationships in this effective caring platform, WeCare.

Platform Structures WeCare contains a mobile app, QR stamps, and a Facebook application. Each of the element are essential and with unique designs. These key elements help us develop our platform to achieve our goal. Different types of users get benefits from the Project. For action starters, they would like to not only help solve the problems but also achieve their self-fulfillment. From our user study, supporters trust those who give transparent and detailed information. In order to attract enough crowds, action starters have to build trust first. Trust from transparency: There are four important steps for action starters to persuade supporters to believe they’re trustworthy:

• Real name and previous background: The easiest way to let supporters to trust action starters is their previous work.

• The detailed causes and solutions of the project: As the more transparent information presents, the supporters would believe more on the project and motivate them to take action.

• How the resources going to be used: From the user study, the supporters want to have more transparency and detailed information. To ensure the action starters’ reputation, they often present their transparent detailed plan to the public.

Figure 3. WeStamp a) By scanning the QR code inside WeStamp, the crowd can easily know the information of the goods. Also, the WeCare system can easily update the location status. b) WeStamp contains a real stamp for care-receiver to send thank you card back.

Figure 4. The crowd can get the most transparency by simply scanning WeStamp

• The initial crowd from your close relations: When the strong initial crowds are approached, the supporters would believe the credit of project. This transparent information would trigger “crowd effect”.

To build better transparency and help action starters achieve their reputation, we layout a project board and a chat room to strengthen the transparency. Inside the project board, the action starters’ profile, detailed causes and solutions, the resources usage, and the list of supporters are presented. We also enable the supporters to ask for further details by the chat room. For supporters, they are willing to see the impact of their help and join important trustable care projects. After understanding the action starters’ reputations and the various projects, the supporters join the projects, which are applicable and trustable. Then, they support the projects by using three resources of support: goods, money, and volunteers.

Goods: We generate a transparent tracking process to approach the actual amount of the need and the information of where the goods deliver. To expand the transparency of the goods, we design a stamp, WeStamp, which meets different users need and is checkable by the crowd. Basically, supporters get WeStamps from everywhere (e.g. convenient stores, gas stations, and etc.) Each Westamp contains a unique URL to link to WeCare and a real international stamp inside. Simply, put the stickers on the goods, and use WeCare app to scan WeStamp, which links the project goods and the actual one. Later on, when the code get scanned, the mobile device automatically check-in where the goods is. Action starters could scan WeStamp to report that they receive the item. Before the goods is given out to the care-receiver, they could scan again to check-in on WeCare to let supporters see the proper usage of the goods. Also, they are able to take out the real stamp inside and send the thank-you mail to the supporter.

Money: Unlike the goods, money is extremely difficult to track. Instead of tracking it, we design a way to bring out the transparency, that is WeCoin, money by cause. For example, to eliminate the population of stray dogs, each stray dog ligation can be funded case-by-case from supporters, which they can see the actual number of their help in WeCoin.

Voluntary work: We ensure the participants’ time and skills happened in reality, and also present a transparent way for everyone nearby to participate and comment. We name our real transparent voluntary work interaction as WeInvolve. First, it would generate a location stamp for action starters to keep. This location stamp enable mobile devices to check-in directly and concise. As long as the crowd arrives, they take out the their mobile device to scan the location stamp. Then, as soon as WeInvolve checks their location, it gives them the right to comments. For volunteers, they could post reviews. For care-receivers, they could send out a thank-you note. For the nearby crowd, they could comment on their thoughts about the caring project.

Using these three resources, the supporters gain the motivation to help because they can take action with transparency easily. For care-receivers, they’re able to get what they actually need, and also have a way to send appreciation to action starters and supporters by mobile app or the international stamp inside WeStamp. Their appreciation is an important encouragement for action starters and supporters, which keep their motivation to help. For nearby crowd, they are willing to help but haven’t taken further action. Installing the app is a great start to take action. Whenever they’re near a care project, the request is send to ask if they are willing to check it. With the notification, the nearby crowd have the sense that these care projects are happening validly in real life. Also, it becomes a reminder for them to take action on WeCare.

Firgure 5. The care-receivers are able to thank the supporters.

Mobile App For the target users, the mobile device has two major functions. One is to enable user to have a better transparency to see and report the extra location information from WeStamp and project in progress. Another is to present a new human interaction with the caring platform which trigger the user’s cognitive motivation from this novelty behavior. The other is to provide the crowd a novelty social network which give the user a sense of closeness and motivation by getting notified, map view and the enjoyment of treating the device as a lens to see through the charity work. Finally with the mobile app, our design can easily ad hoc to today’s world, which is innovative and applicable.

The WeCare mobile app separates the caring platform into two views: categorize view and map views. In categorize views, the user can easily follow various projects based on their personal preferences (e.g. Poverty, disaster, orphans, and etc.) In this way, WeCare can push the accurate request to help the user to trigger their motivation. In the map view, users can easily switch between local, national, and international view. Using this method, users can easily focus on the real caring projects happening around the world and understand what others support. With the visualize information, user can easily understand the projects around and also have a full transparency of the projects.

Conclusion and Future work We present a transparent and encouraging caring platform for all charity work. We believe with the help of this platform, the crowd draw more attention to caring projects, put more efforts in helping each other, and increase motivation on taking caring projects.

We hope the further extension of the work would strengthen this platform by the discovery of:

• The type of the projects and the behavior change after WeCare transparent caring platform

• The influence on traditional social networking • The data of projects after applying to the real world • The neuron prediction of the related projects

By connecting the strong bond with the crowd, we will continue our development and apply improvements to address the unlimited potential of human kindness. With this innovative service of helping each other, we believe the crowd can bring out the most kindness through collaboration and care more to the world.

Acknowledgements We grateful to Prof. Mike Chen and Prof. Tang who spend considerable time to providing helpful advise and support throughout the design and development of our work. Also, We thank all the volunteers, and all the participants.

References [1] Penelope Burk, (2010), The Cygnus Donor Survey (US Edition), Cygnus Applied Research, Inc. [2] DonorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance for 2009 [3] Karla A. Henderson, JOPERD-- Enjoyment as the link between leisure and physical activity The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance| September 01, [4] Fogg, B. 2009. Creating persuasive technologies: an eight-step design process. In Proc. of Persuasive '09, ACM, 1--6. [5] Lim Yung-Hui, 2012, 1 Billion Facebook Users On Earth: Are We There Yet?, Forbes. [6] Pei-Yi Kuo, Elizabeth M. Gerber, “Design Principles: Crowdfunding as a Creativity Support Tool,” [7] Daniel Kahneman; Amos Tversky, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk, Econometrica, Vol. 47, No. 2. (Mar., 1979) [8] Arpita Ghosh, Mohammad Mahdian, Charity auctions on social networks, Bibliometrics, 2008 [9] Samuel Greengard,“Following the crowd”, Magazine Communications of the ACM CACM Homepage archive Volume 54 Issue 2, February 2011 Pages 20-22

Firgure 6. With map view, the crowd can see the care around.