In this uplifting presentation as part of the TED Talks series, Monitor's Katherine Fulton sketches the new future of philanthropy -- one where collaboration and innovation allow regular people to do big things, even when money is scarce. Giving five practical examples of crowd-driven philanthropy, she calls for a new generation of citizen leaders.

"What's really interesting here is that we're not thinking our way into a new way of acting. We're acting our way into a new way of thinking," Fulton says. "Philanthropy is reorganizing itself before our very eyes. And even though all of the experiments and all of the big givers don't yet fulfill this aspiration, I think this is the new zeitgeist: open, big, fast, connected."

Fulton describes five categories of experiments each of which she says "challenges an old assumption of philanthropy," which include:

1. Mass collaboration, exemplified by Paul Hawken's WiserEarth project a reminder that "philanthropy is about giving of time and talent, not just money." This is to philanthropy what Wikipedia is to online collaboration.

2. Online philanthropy marketplaces. This is to philanthropy what eBay and Amazon are to commerce. "Think of it as peer-to-peer philanthropy. And this challenges yet another assumption, which is that organized philanthropy is only for the very wealthy," Fulton says. Examples include DonorsChoose, Changing the Present and Give India.

3. Aggregated giving, represented by Warren Buffet's historic gift to the Gates Foundation. "He challenged another assumption, that every giver should have his or her own fund or foundation. There are now, today, so many new funds that are aggregating giving and investing, bringing together people around a common goal, to think bigger," Fulton says. Examples include the Acumen Fund, New Profit and New Schools Venture Fund.

4. Innovation and competitions, which offer a visible competition and prize to attract talent and money to some of the most difficult issues, and thereby speed the solution. "This tackles yet another assumption, that the giver and the organization is at the center, as opposed to putting the problem at the center," Fulton says. "You can look to these innovators to help us especially with things that require technological or scientific solution."

5. Social investing, which, Fulton says, "tackles the biggest assumption of all, that business is business, and philanthropy is the vehicle of people who want to create change in the world." Xigi.net is a community site that links and maps a new social capital market. "We can look to these innovators to help us remember that if we can leverage even a small amount of the capital that it seeks to return, the good that can be driven could be astonishing," Fulton says.

See the video presentation below.

About Katherine Fulton
Katherine Fulton is a partner at Monitor and president of the Monitor Institute, the vehicle through which Monitor applies its knowledge, expertise, skill and capital to solving complex social problems. She is the co-author of Looking Out for the Future: An Orientation for Twenty-First Century Philanthropists. Her efforts have won her both a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and a Lyndhurst Foundation prize for community service, and her innovative course design at Duke University was featured in Time magazine.