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This article was taken from the April issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
Make Your Company Radically Transparent
In a basement laboratory in east London, Dr Crispin Hiley is peering down a microscope looking for cells infected with a virus he has created. While his work might be cloning, Hiley, 29, isn't the archetypal reclusive scientist.
The project he's working on is funded by Cancer Research UK and aims to use a genetically modified virus to infect and destroy pancreatic cancer cells -- a form of the disease that doesn't respond to traditional chemical or radiation treatments, and has a five-year survival rate of just three to five per cent. What's unique is that Hiley, along with 49 other scientists across the country, is directly engaged with every member of the public supporting his research.
Upstairs, after a morning collecting samples, Hiley logs in to his laptop. On a public site, he checks exactly how much money has been donated: almost £8,000 so far, towards a goal of £20,000. He can see who has donated, how much they gave and why they gave it. A Facebook-style newsfeed tallies recent donations: "debbiebentley donated £38.46 'in memory of my mum who died of pancreatic cancer.
So kind and giving and lost so quickly,'" reads one update.
Another: "Linda Howe donated £128.21. 'My husband passed away in March very suddenly. We found out he had pancreatic cancer. I do miss him so much. He is always in my thoughts. I just wouldn't wish that disease on anyone. God bless Tom.'"
It's hard for Hiley to get much human perspective on pancreatic cancer because there are so few survivors. "When you're in a lab the whole time, in dark rooms looking down microscopes, it's easy to lose touch with why you're doing this," he says. "It's good to have a connection. It gives me a focus."
MyProjects, launched in November 2008, is a radical approach to transparency in charities. The website allows users to browse a variety of projects funded by Cancer Research UK, so that rather than giving to an organisation as a whole, donors can choose exactly where their money is invested. Each page explains the disease each team is aiming to treat, and how it aims to do so. The pages then provide donors with feedback on the impact their donations are having: the page for Hiley's research details the initial success his virus has had in killing pancreatic cancer cells grown in the lab.
This choice and transparency builds on the example of kiva.org, the person-to-person microlending site, but Cancer Research UK is unique in applying the model to systems and processes that have been in place for more than 100 years. It's a natural fit. "People have lots of different reasons for giving to Cancer Research UK, because cancer is a collection of more than 200 diseases," explains Kevin Waudby, 42, head of innovation at the charity. "People are affected by it in different ways. They're able to tell their stories on MyProjects. I strongly believe that people give to individuals, and I believe people will give because of these stories. What Cancer Research UK does is underwrite the quality of that research." And people are giving, generously: the average donation to MyProjects is £100.
It's this community aspect that takes MyProjects beyond the Kiva template. Users can set up "Giving Groups", linked with specific research projects, to include and organise friends and family. In April 2009, Richard Guerin was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, a form of skin cancer ("It's the one you die from, basically," he says). After doctors removed the initial tumour from the side of his head, he could do little but wait.
In the meantime, he came across the MyProjects site and created a Giving Group called "Let's beat malignant melanoma together". So far, Guerin has raised £11,442 from friends and work colleagues: "I think they thought it was cool: giving to something that is helping very specifically. They go to my page, they see my photo, a couple of paragraphs... It helps personalise it."
Guerin has set himself a target of £60,000. For him, supporting MyProjects is a way to fight his cancer. "I'm a pretty proactive guy. When I gave the money away, I wanted it to be towards identifiable, material research. God forbid, if the cancer does come back and I'm not here in two years, I want to be seen to have put up a good fight."
The site is still in beta and hasn't benefited from traditional marketing. For now, the MyProjects team is observing how donors use it and are making changes based upon that. When the site is relaunched at the end of March, users will be able to give to research that is geographically close to them. But the ultimate aim is to create nothing less than a social network for charity. "The vision for MyProjects is that it becomes a platform for all our fundraising projects," explains Waudby.
More companies in our Work Smarter package:
Howies
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UBS
HubSpot
Best Buy
Red Gate
Vestergaard Frandsen
Inditex
McLaren
Behance
LiveOps
Atlassian
D'O
Victors & Spoils
Happy Computers
Mosaic
Generation Press
The Public School
37signals
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
