*The Debatewise Blog
Welcome to the new Debatewise
So as I’m sure you all know (you mean you don’t read the About Us page daily?), Debatewise has a new form. No longer are we greedy capitalist pigs looking to make money off the poor worker. Oh no. We’re now a social enterprise here to make the world a better place.Essentially this means we’ve turned into a not-for-profit. It happened, I will admit, partly because people weren’t willing to fund us. Investors couldn’t see they’d get a return for their money and were worried the idea wasn’t protectable. Unpleasant truths both.
But the real change took place when I read a blog post arguing Wikipedia could be an incredible force for good if it started taking advertising and donated all its profits to charity. And not only would Wikipedia generate large amounts of money, but the approach would also encourage more people to get involved with the project.
I’ve often struggled with the idea that people would want to donate their time and knowledge to a profit-making enterprise. I resolved it by believing the desire to reach a large audience of neutrals would be so attractive to debaters that they’d get over the fact someone was making money off them.
However, I think it’s pretty obvious that an organisation set-up in the way Dan Malvern outlined would be a far better mechanism for encouraging contributions, and since the number of contributions is absolutely essential to our success, making the change wasn’t a difficult decision.
It did mean I have had to give up on the idea of a Bentley and a big house in Hampstead, but hey, doing good is far more satisfying isn’t it? Tell me it is.
I am a bit of a hippy at heart so the decision was confirmed as wise when, in one of those wonderful moments of serendipity, Noel Selegzi from the Open Society got in touch asking if we needed any help literally a week after I’d read Dan’s blog post. They’re now contributing some money and lots of expertise
So this is the new Debatewise. We are a not-for-profit and if we ever reach critical mass every penny not used to run the organisation will be donated to charity. And moreover, we’ll allow you, dear readers, to decide which good causes we support.
Now if that isn’t a good enough reason to get involved I don’t know what is.