KarmaKorn is one of 65 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. These companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.
KarmaKorn, a startup launching at the DEMO conference in Palm Desert, is developing a Facebook application that harnesses market forces to let people support the causes they care most about. Its tagline: Disruptive philanthropy.
The app, which will launch at the end of next month at the Social Enterprise Summit + World Forum in San Francisco, will allow people to do good deeds, even if they lack resources and social reach. But the company concept sounds lot more like "pay it forward" campaigns than capitalism.
The example the company gives is of a little girl who plants a tree in Brazil at the request of a middle-aged banker in London, who takes a homeless man to lunch inspired by a mother in Nebraska, and so on, with many people doing good thousands of miles away from one another. KarmaKorn's currency will run between all of these different parties, rewarding them for completing tasks.
"We believe that market forces are very powerful drivers of social behavior -- much like games," says chief executive Bill Scheurer. "Bringing currency and related market mechanisms into the social change sector will help people connect motivations with actions, find each other, and work together to fulfull their deepest aspirations for good.
Based in Lindenhurst, Ill., the company is self-funded by its founders so far. But Scheurer -- who wouldn't reveal much about how the application will actually work -- says he hopes the appearance at DEMO will help them find venture capital contacts for a possible new round.
It's clear that KarmaKorn's goal is to change the way regular people think about philanthropy. Instead of making a one-way donation as many have done in the past, the new philanthropy will leverage technology and knit social networks together to spur positive change.