One of the compelling features of The Broccoli Project business model is its blended / hybrid offering. It is a variation of the classic two sided market that credit cards use.

The word “analytics” is the latest in internet buzzwords (along with realtime, the semantic web etc.)  for some help in creating buzzwords you can check this out.

The 2-sided market of Broccoli:

Side 1:

The Broccoli Project to it’s participants is a rewards program that offers rewards that matter – food, clothing shelter (as opposed to toasters, nick nacks and stuff you didn’t know you didn’t need!) on the other side, it offers transparency to donors as to exactly how the funds will be used. But there is an exchange that takes place.

The Broccoli Project encourages positive social behavior in exchange for rewards that matter – so rather than just another hand out, its a hand up. Rewards for attending a skills development workshop, for learning how to use a mouse on a computer, for take preventative health care, for staying in school – simple acts that overtime can cause compounding effects on a personal and societal level.

The act of helping somebody can be found in the bible, but the problem with just handing aid out is that it creates a dependency that has the long term effect of learned helplessness.

It’s not that it is a bad thing to give, but western aid in its current form ironically has given birth to a self-serving industry that is estimated at about $100bn annually, with an estimated $1trillion poured into Africa alone over the last 50 years. [1] [2] [3] [4] Africa doesn’t look much better and in fact in some cases is worse off! [5] The irony here is that estimates indicate that upto 80% of aid supports the aid industry rather then the people it was meant to help!

Side-2:

The other side of the market is a donor dashboard into seeing how deployed funds and programs are working – we have called this Broccoli Analytics. For each activity or behaviour, a value is ‘earned’ and the values can be redeemed. This gives donors a view into how funds were used in a realtime [buzzword alert]  manner. In final development is a activity statement that shows each casual donor at what stage funds are giving true real-time transparency to how funds are being used.