New online communities are enabling collaborative consumption of goods and services through peer-to-peer sharing, trading, lending, leasing and swapping. Strangers can rent cars from each other, lease their bedrooms out to travellers, conduct chores for each other and even check in on other people’s hospitalised relatives. The peer-to-peer leasing market is expected to grow as consumers become part-time micro-entrepreneurs who lease out their seldom-used purchases (e.g. DIY tools such as drills).
Individuals can rate and recommend the people with whom they have done ‘business’ (see recommendation economy). This grassroots transparency builds trust which releases people to exercise goodwill and participate in these behaviours (see online trust and identity).
Concerns about climate change and global resource constraints prompt people to share products and buy fewer new products. The desire for community, local connections and conversation is also a driver. These websites are creating a new economy where the currency is goodwill and the theme is reciprocity.
What are the implications?
Increase in the use of reciprocity to incentivise volunteering, for example the increase in ‘time-banking’ schemes (see trends in volunteering).
Opportunities for organisations to facilitate peer-to-peer leasing of products and resources between their beneficiaries.
Ability to generate revenue through facilitating opportunities for peer-to-peer leasing of products and resources.
Increase in collaborative funding of new projects (see online collaboration).
Ability for individuals to save money through sharing products and services, potentially addressing poverty and inequality
Changing attitudes towards ethical living and consumerism as collaborative consumption potentially enhances or displaces other ethical behaviours.
Moving forward
With a growing emphasis on time as a currency for which people will expect to be remunerated with favours and benefits, voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) will need to think about volunteer retention and recruitment in a new light.
How can you reward and recognise volunteering?
Can your organisation plug into existing time banking schemes?
Beneficiaries of charitable services can share, trade, lend, lease and swap with each other.
How can your organisation empower current and former beneficiaries to share and exchange resources with each other?
Do you have former beneficiaries who have equipment, materials or resources which would be useful to current beneficiaries?
Collaborative consumption can generate online revenue for VCOs. Websites such as eBay.com and Couchsurfing.com that enable sharing, trading and other collaborative consumption behaviours can be highly profitable. Given the relative newness of collaborative consumption and its growth potential, there is scope for VCOs to promote these behaviours to their supporters.
Does your organisation have experience in offering non-traditional fundraising products to your supporters?
Does your organisation have a supporter base which could be further monetised?
What is it? A chart showing how people are increasingly growing up sharing files, photos, knowledge, and daily thoughts—and how these collaborative behaviours are moving into other areas of our lives.
How useful is this? This is an excellent overview of how collaborative consumption activities have grown and changed over the past 50 years.
What is it? Article by Rachel Bosman, author of Collaborative Consumption, on the growth of collaborative consumption.
How useful is this? The article gives a good overview of the tenets of collaborative consumption, including crowd-funding, redistribution and time-sharing.
Linked to this, I've just come across an interesting example of how digital impacts/is impacting on the process of writing books - the process used by Nina Simon to write the Participatory Museum. It began life as a closed wiki - she wrote chapters, they went through edits from other museum types. Then she turned it into an ordinary book that anyone can buy:
Membership organisations need to consider this if you have local or regional groups: with a shift to localism at a governmental level will the balance of power within your organisation shift away from the central office? How can you use local links to your advantage and manage potential difficulties which might arise? Can you consider utilising your members’ existing networks to help build links with local government? If so, are you prepared for the balance of power shift that this will bring?
I came across this post earlier discussing the rise of real time news. Real time reporting can be gripping; how many of us sat open mouthed and horrified as we watched the second plane collide with the twin towers, or people jumping from the windows on 9/11? But while it brings us instantly up to date, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming and may actually stop us from processing any of it in any depth. With information overload being a well voiced issue at the moment (even making it into adverts for microsoft's search engine bing), how can we control the information we receive and make the most of this progress in reporting? This article examines different ways to make the news we receive manageable and relevant; using these tools lets you cut out the white noise of too much irrelevant information and actually find the facts that mean the most to you.
Megan
Collaborative consumption
New online communities are enabling collaborative consumption of goods and services through peer-to-peer sharing, trading, lending, leasing and swapping. Strangers can rent cars from each other, lease their bedrooms out to travellers, conduct chores for each other and even check in on other people’s hospitalised relatives. The peer-to-peer leasing market is expected to grow as consumers become part-time micro-entrepreneurs who lease out their seldom-used purchases (e.g. DIY tools such as drills).
Individuals can rate and recommend the people with whom they have done ‘business’ (see recommendation economy). This grassroots transparency builds trust which releases people to exercise goodwill and participate in these behaviours (see online trust and identity).
Concerns about climate change and global resource constraints prompt people to share products and buy fewer new products. The desire for community, local connections and conversation is also a driver. These websites are creating a new economy where the currency is goodwill and the theme is reciprocity.
What are the implications?
Moving forward
With a growing emphasis on time as a currency for which people will expect to be remunerated with favours and benefits, voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) will need to think about volunteer retention and recruitment in a new light.
Beneficiaries of charitable services can share, trade, lend, lease and swap with each other.
Collaborative consumption can generate online revenue for VCOs. Websites such as eBay.com and Couchsurfing.com that enable sharing, trading and other collaborative consumption behaviours can be highly profitable. Given the relative newness of collaborative consumption and its growth potential, there is scope for VCOs to promote these behaviours to their supporters.
Want to know more?
Collaborative Consumption
Published by: Oxygen Consulting
Date: 2007
Format: PDF
What is it? Article by Ray Algar on consumers’ growing awareness of their collaborative power and the impact this will have on product pricing.
How useful is this? The article is a thought-starter for fundraising managers considering new ideas.
Sharing Is Contagious
Published by: GOOD Design
Date: 2010
Format: Web
What is it? A chart showing how people are increasingly growing up sharing files, photos, knowledge, and daily thoughts—and how these collaborative behaviours are moving into other areas of our lives.
How useful is this? This is an excellent overview of how collaborative consumption activities have grown and changed over the past 50 years.
The Everyday Entrepreneur
Published by: The RSA
Date: 2010
Format: PDF
What is it? Article by Rachel Bosman, author of Collaborative Consumption, on the growth of collaborative consumption.
How useful is this? The article gives a good overview of the tenets of collaborative consumption, including crowd-funding, redistribution and time-sharing.
Kathryn
From Paper to Pixels
Linked to this, I've just come across an interesting example of how digital impacts/is impacting on the process of writing books - the process used by Nina Simon to write the Participatory Museum. It began life as a closed wiki - she wrote chapters, they went through edits from other museum types. Then she turned it into an ordinary book that anyone can buy:
http://www.participatorymuseum.org/ and also as a free online document.
(This was brought to my attention by Kate Smith).
Katherine
Localism agenda
Membership organisations need to consider this if you have local or regional groups: with a shift to localism at a governmental level will the balance of power within your organisation shift away from the central office? How can you use local links to your advantage and manage potential difficulties which might arise? Can you consider utilising your members’ existing networks to help build links with local government? If so, are you prepared for the balance of power shift that this will bring?
Mark
Government Strategy on mental health
Caroline
Reporting from the social media exchange: what is news?
I came across this post earlier discussing the rise of real time news. Real time reporting can be gripping; how many of us sat open mouthed and horrified as we watched the second plane collide with the twin towers, or people jumping from the windows on 9/11? But while it brings us instantly up to date, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming and may actually stop us from processing any of it in any depth. With information overload being a well voiced issue at the moment (even making it into adverts for microsoft's search engine bing), how can we control the information we receive and make the most of this progress in reporting? This article examines different ways to make the news we receive manageable and relevant; using these tools lets you cut out the white noise of too much irrelevant information and actually find the facts that mean the most to you.