This page is still being edited. Join in if you feel like it!
editProposal for a new project on wikipedia: wikidevelopmentplans
An idea and business plan generator to make the world a better place, and a finance provider to more easily execute them.
Two important differences between this proposal and many charities
editMost charities have a gigantic overhead: salary to personnel, rent for office space, etcetera. So often of the 100 dollars you give to them, only ** to ** dollars goes to help the cause you want to support. This is a suggestion for a business model that has almost no overhead at all.
Most charities cannot survive without donations, because they only spend money and do not try to make it. wikidevelopmentplans would only grant loans to those projects it is reasonably certain can make a profit, and as a consequence can pay the loans back.
This proposal is an attempt to link the concept of microcredit to wikipedia.
Microcredits are small loans to poor people who want to start a business to make money. Microcredits have been hugely succesfull, with over ** procent of the loans paid back and lifting **** people out of poverty. Wikipedia compares favourably with Encyclopedia Brittanica, at a few percent of the cost, and that by letting volunteers compile it.
No existing microcredit organization has the number and diversity of people as wikipedia has. So no existing microcredit organization has the potential brainpower that wikipedia has. So should wikipedia decide to open a new section on its webpage, it could over time become the biggest (quasi) microcredit organization in the world, and with that one of the biggest engines for good in the world.
This would not just be a merge of the concepts of microcredits and wikipedia, but a significant expansion of both. Now, microcredits are small loans to poor people to enable them to start a business. If you start a microcredit organization and then ask uncountable numbers of people from all over the world to input their ideas and plans to make the world a better place, and let those same people evaluate the feasibililty of these plans, this organization could tackle most any problem it takes its fancy to.
Wikipedia has so many people contributing to it because they think compiling a encyclopedia that is to become available for free to everyone on the planet is a good cause. In one way this proposal is even more likely to become a success because the cause it promotes is bigger than that of wikipedia. The oppurtunity to change the world, by contributing to a business plan, has the chance of being embraced even more enthousiasticly than merely compiling an encyclopedia for free to every person on the planet.
It is less likely to become a success, on the other hand, because whereas people can go to wikipedia to access useful information, less such information would be found in this new section.
You did not see a proposal like this before because of the same reason you did not see wikipedia before the internet: it could not be done. But because wikipedia has turned into the success it has, we think this can too.
To reduce clutter, plans that for some time have had no activity get removed.
Finding sponsors
Besides from the obvious public and private sponsors, this is another interesting possibility:
People can put money into an account at wikipedia they created and from there put money into projects they would like to participate in. They do not put money into the project itself but transfer it to wikipedia, for a predefined period of time after which wikipedia transfers it back. Wikipedia then puts the money into the projects. By this construction wikipedia tries to ensure people do not lose money if they happen to invest in a nonperforming project.
In return for their investment they get a percentage of the profit the project makes and the interest it pays until wikipedia transfers the money back. The contributors to business plans can also put money into their accounts, but they do it by writing useful content.
How to write a business plan
Who will execute the projects
Ideal candidates should be a group of people living in the country or region in which the project would be executed, and who in the past have showed considerable entrepeneurial skills. These people would be contacted by the contributors to the plan, if it is not they themselves who wrote it.
How does it work:
1. Someone has an idea on how to make money making the world a better place. He or she writes this idea down and tries to write down the beginnings of a plan to make it a reality. Or someone had an idea for some time already and decides to post it on the site in the hope of getting help.
2. People visiting the site read the plan and if they decide this particular idea is interesting enough they may decide to improve upon it.
3. After a while, when the contributors to the plan think the plan is thought out clearly enough so it can be executed, a team of succesful entrepeneurs look at the plan and give feedback.
4. Stages 2 and 3 get repeated until the decision is taken to grant the loan to a company or group of persons to execute the plan, or it is decided the plan is too uncertain of success and it is abandondend in that form.
5. If it is decided to grant the loan to execute the plan. The persons chosen execute it and regularly share their progress on the site. The loan would be paid back and part of the interest received would go to the contributors of the plan, the rest of the interest would flow back into wikipedia.
Judges are chosen by wikipedia from the contributors to the site. They are thought by wikipedia to be competent in judging on one or several of the requirements the plans should meet.
What are the priorities
To get as much as possible done in the shortest possible time and for the least possible amount of money, key considerations should be:
1.
Proposition of a new project on wikipedia: wiki
Instead of encyclopediac entries it would be a collection of business plans. The plans would propose commercial projects designed to make the world a better place. The business plans would be submitted and edited by users and would periodically get feedback from, for example, venture capitalists. This feedback would be used to improve the plans. Eventually some of the plans would be executed; loans would be granted.
Why wikipedia.org is a good place to start.
Wikipedia's mission is to bring free knowledge to every person in the entire planet. This proposal would build on that in that it could help every person on the planet to more easily use that information to their own and everyone else's advantage.
Wikipedia can open a new section on its website today, spending no or very little money. Over time the section would mature, and business plans would be written and improved upon by wikipedia’s volunteers. When a critical mass is achieved, wikipedia can show these to potential sponsors. And when money is acquired, wikipedia can start functioning as a bank, aswell as an idea generator.
It would make sense to first try to execute small and inexpensive projects, to gain experience and reduce the risk of losing money. The profits made from these projects would flow back into wikipedia, besides a percentage of the profits going to the volunteers who contributed to the plan, to increase their enthousiasm.
If done succesfully the project could, over time, run without sponsoring and make money to take on more and bigger projects.
This proposal is an explicit attempt to merge the concepts of microcredit – giving small loans to people who have a good idea to make money, and otherwise would not have access to finance – and wikipedia – an uncountable number of people mobilised to make a product to the best of their ability, at very little cost. The result of this merge is, hopefully, an uncountable number of people from all over the world and with very different backgrounds working on enormously varied plans and projects. And when the plans are thought ready for execution by an independent jury or a majority of the contributors, they get executed
Proposed goals of the project:
Decrease greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a level deemed acceptable by a majority of scientists; Make water suitable for drinking available to everyone; Eliminate disease; Eliminate poverty.