New way of giving: CPF online charity work initiative revives philanthropy

AMMAN — Keeping track of your social footprint on the world by measuring the changes you are creating in other people’s lives has recently become possible, through the launch of a new social impact platform working under the Crown Prince Foundation’s (CPF) umbrella, Naua.

“When people or companies donate money, they rarely see or know about the concrete impact their donation made. With Naua, we wanted to take another approach and give people a measure of the social impact they can have by donating and volunteering,” Naua’s CEO Ahmad Zubi told The Jordan Times recently.  

A non for profit initiative instigated by the private sector in 2016, Naua was officially launched in Jordan in July 2018, as an e-platform that aims to enhance charity work by bringing together various parties through a safe and transparent online approach, who can then connect to fundraise and offer their volunteering services.

“The real and truly fascinating difference with Naua is that we only select project with a clear, measurable social impact,” Zubi underlined, noting that “this constitutes a true change from the traditional way of giving which tends to detach the funding party from the outputs of its donation”. 

How Naua does it is by allowing each user to create a “social impact profile” — the same way as he/she would on a traditional website — which will display the contributions the user has already made to other people’s lives, whether in education, livelihood, culture, among many other aspects.

“This means that, under your name, you will be able to see that ‘you have helped three families and supported four students’ for instance, which is only made possible by the proper and clear structuring of all supported projects in accordance with reportable impact,” the CEO elaborated, noting that nine volunteering projects have been promoted on the platform, requiring 1,500 volunteers with an average of eight hours per activity, “a total of 12,000 volunteering hours already”.

Seen as a “one of its kind” initiative in the region, Naua has already supported 10 projects worth $150,000, five of which have concluded, while five others are still ongoing.

 “Basically what Naua does is connecting all social actors — citizens, private sector and NGOs — to improve the allocation of resources and social impact,” Naua’s director of marketing, Khaled Abu Ajwa, explained, stressing that this also allows smaller and more innovative NGOs to get better visibility for their projects.

To ensure that its values of transparency, impact and sustainability are respected, the platform goes through the following steps: First it verifies the NGOs applying to Naua before evaluating their projects. It then rallies support by allowing them to connect with both donors and volunteers. And finally, it reports the social impact of all projects and participants.

“We have a total of 10 corporate donors already subscribed to Naua and we have partnered with 32 Civil Society Organisations so far, while nine live projects are still requiring funding,” Abu Ajwa pointed out.

At the official launch of the platform, in late July, the CPF CEO Tamam Mango said: “Naua reflects HRH Crown Prince Hussein’s vision, where youth are the builders of the future,” noting that a CPF special law was endorsed in 2015 to implement the Crown Prince’s vision towards building a bright future for Jordan’s youth by inspiring and driving their engagement to improve community well-being in three main aspects: Innovation and entrepreneurship; leadership and participation; giving and community service.