Foundations: OpenSocial and the Others

Yahoo, Google and MySpace announced the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation this morning.

Essentially, the group will provide resources to those willing to build on shared open-standards in order to increase access to social apps for all. (Sort of like the Mozilla Foundation's mission of open standards programming). The idea is to reduce the amount of duplicate work amongst developers. This will help with OpenID efforts and increase popularity and uniques across the shared partners' sites. So basically it's a nonprofit organization that will increase revenue and counter FaceBook's proprietary practices.

HOW DO FOUNDATIONS WORK?
A foundation is generally a donor-advised fund that endows gifts to various cause-related activities. Basically, every foundation has to meet IRS requirements in order to incorporate and gain federal tax exemptions. Foundations receive similar tax breaks to non-profit organizations except that they must pay an excise tax. So, when companies are rolling in dough, they can donate to their own foundations, advise on those funds, help some good causes and get a tax break.

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES?
I'm all for the OpenSocial Foundation as well as the Mozilla Foundation as I view these groups as being forged in the spirit of collaboration and a neutral web. But what do we know of the others?

As far as tech-related foundations are concerned, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the leading organizations in public health and independent education. This is evident in the fact that the world's richest man, Warren Buffet made plans in 2006 to leave 83% of his $62 billion dollar fortune to the Gate's Foundation as an endowment. In comparison, when it comes to cause-related efforts, Google and Yahoo are virtually unknown. I'm not sure whether this is because the two organizations spend less time promoting their successes or whether the billions at the Gates Foundation's disposal is enough to make any effort pale in comparison.

GOOGLE.ORG
Two years ago Google launched Google.org with efforts to combat poverty, fund start-up companies and produce fuel-efficient cars. When Google.org's Executive Director Larry Brilliant won the TED prize later that year, his wish for the future was an “early detection, rapid response” system for disease outbreaks. Upon first glance, I looked for a connection between Google's $3.9 million investment in Anne Wojcicki's 23andMe genome service and the foundation's chronic disease-related mission.

Google co-founder Sergei Brin received a great deal of criticism last year for investing in the company as Wojcicki was linked as a love interest. Nevertheless, the investment was not made through Google's foundation side as 23andme has more of an emphasis on personal genome exploration than it does on widespread public health initiatives. Instead, the $10 million dollars invested towards Google.org's "Predict and Prevent" causes include sizable contributions to the Global Health and Security Initiative and a $5 million dollar multi-year grant toInSTEDD -an early disease detection and rapid disaster response program.

Google.org has also launched a $10 million dollar RFP program calling for investment proposals in for-profit companies believed to accelerate the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

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Foundations: OpenSocial and the Others

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