A GOOD Experiment

A year ago, I came to GOOD to help the company with its effort to establish a community, rather than just an audience. As I saw it, GOOD's view—once controversial—that living well and doing good weren't mutually exclusive, had become part of the mainstream. How could GOOD take the next step and translate that into impact?

How to accomplish impact certainly isn't obvious. The landscape is littered with companies that have failed to do it. Those that have survived have done so through becoming a neutral platform: whatever cause you have they will help you support. But at GOOD, which represents the values of global citizens, neutrality isn't an option.

So our big, hairy, audacious goal is to build a vibrant community of doers that are making a difference in the world. By creating a place where people gather and share their creative actions, we are taking the world on. We can get over the humps of "I don't know how to get started" and “I don’t have anyone to do this with.”

But we don't want to stop there. We really want to know if this can be applied to global issues and not just local ones. So we have created the Global Action Experiment, and here is where we need your help.

Hypothesis: Taking action connected to countries other than your own, whether you are educated about it or not, will make you care more about issues that country is facing, aka become a better global neighbor.

Procedure: Create an environment where people can celebrate the actions they are taking and encourage global neighboring actions. Assess attitudes before and after action is taken.

The Global Action Experiment will take place over the next 2 months through the following steps:

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• Collect ideas about how to creatively take action to become a better global neighbor
• Identify what drives people to action via editorial, taking action with a friend, etc.
• Measure how many people participate and track their experience and attitudes once they have participated.

Here are some Global Action examples:

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• People pledging their birthdays for clean drinking water
• Seniors teaching English to kids in Brazil via video chat
• Software developers creating software to power micro-financing
• Mothers donating their breast milk to infants around the world
• Individuals attempting to live on $1.50/day to build empathy for the world's poorest
• Consumers using their purchasing power through “buy-one give-one” programs to help others
• Designers empowering small businesses in other countries by designing goods they can produce
• Children exchanging art to connect to each other

What other ideas are out there? Have you done something that makes you a better global citizen? Or know someone who has? If so, please share your story, email it to us at community@goodinc.com or leave a comment on this article.

Craig Ogg is the Head of Community, GOOD.is