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The Members Project is American Express’s quest to reach out and ask the community for suggestions for worthy causes to donate to is now in its final stretch.

There are now just a couple of weeks left to vote for the winner from the selection of five finalists. However, the list is fairly predictable; in the lead there’s an educational initiative, followed by a plan to restore funding to the US National Park Service, an idea to provide wind and solar power for residential homes, safe drinking water for the developing world and an initiative to plant a million trees.

The corporation probably gives away millions of dollars a year in charitable donations and the $5 million or so it’s putting into this initiative is a fraction of the overall total. However, any cause and the initiative to reach out to gain input from the community is a good one, but couldn’t it have been a little different?

Two of the five initiatives are motions to give money to giant institutions; the US National Parks (theoretically a donation by American Express means the government has less to contribute) and the United Nations with the water aid program. Shouldn’t the program have been focused on initiatives at a local and grassroots level? Should the ideas come from more local and grassroots organizations that could have had impact in their communities?

American Express can make donations at corporate level to the giant institutions; the Members Project had the potential to work at a completely different level.

The problem lies with the “Wisdom of Crowds”, when you operate a popularity contest, it’s impossible for anything, but the giant ideas to make it through the voting process. The global ends up winning out over the local.

The Members Project has the potential to a fantastic initiative for Amex, but next year they should select a jury of luminaries and give them the task to pick a dozen or so local initiatives that the crowd gets the chance to vote on.

This change would allow the giant corporation to play an important grassroots role with the obvious positive benefit for the brand.

 

Posted by Ed Cotton