Why We Partner
GlobalGiving (GG) is the world’s leading crowdfunding platform, connecting nonprofits and donors and giving nonprofits what they need to make their impact by providing organizations with credibility, quasi-flexible funds, tools for fundraising, and access to a global donor network.
PSYDEH does needed, paradigm-changing work in the field of community-led development while modeling what is possible for other Mexican and Global South non-profits navigating a challenging funding climate, including by diversifying resource streams. One of our important streams, maybe the most important, has been crowdfunding with GG with whom we’ve partnered since late-2016.
Where We Focus Our Efforts
GG offers PSYDEH five different ways in which they give us a hand-up and not a handout. First, we use their platform to launch subject-matter-specific crowdfunding campaigns to secure the flexible funding we need to do sustainable-impact focused fieldwork and attract and retain the team we need to sustain this work. Second, we consistently push to co-create win-win opportunities for GG, PSYDEH, and GG’s corporate partners, thus showing other global public and private institutions why they should partner with us. Next, we invest heavily in GG’s strategic initiatives with the aim to give our Global South voice on the need for and ways to provide nonprofits equitable access to resources, not just equal access. Lastly, we see their 7000+ non-profit network as a key source of better-practices learning and sharing.
Why it is a Win-win Partnership
GlobalGiving earns a small percentage of every dollar raised on their platform in exchange for showcasing nonprofits’ work on a polished, easy-to-use platform that the marketplace can trust while incentivizing donors to invest via thematic campaigns run year-round during which GG offers a sizeable bonus/matching fund or their powerful theme-specific initiatives like their Girl Fund, Project of the Month Club and Disaster Recovery initiatives. Moreover, by working to listen to our needs when making unique financial and in-kind investments in nonprofit partners, PSYDEH’s success story is very much theirs. They play a seminal role in our ability to make a sustainable impact in our community-led development work, since joining in late-2016 and now moving forward. Lastly, when invited to have a seat at the table during global efforts to help GG improve, we have done our level best to help them realize their full potential as a democratizing agent changing how resources are distributed across the globe.
PSYDEH wins in so many ways. We raise invaluable flexible funding on their platform via our own novel efforts integrating game theory, animation, and high-quality videos like our first campaign video in 2017 or this 2021 video, as well as through their platform–including special grants GG awards to PSYDEH like the 2020 Project of the Month Club or COVID-19 emergency grant. It is not a stretch to say sans GG’s support we would not likely have survived the pandemic and the Mexican government’s existential attack on civil society since 2018.
With awards like being selected from a field of 7000+ in 2018 as one of their top 15 nonprofits committed to making an impact, GG helps us to build cachet as a unique Global South-based, grassroots nonprofit capable of creating a win-win with the globe’s leading crowdfunding platform (and their corporate and non-profit partners). Indeed, GG has helped us to be chosen for myriad corporate alliances like Bank of America in 2018, Dentsu Aegis Network in 2019, and HSBC in 2021. Moreover, we know it is not a stretch to conclude how GG showcasing PSYDEH as a trusted and vetted Mexican nonprofit makes possible other partnerships like that which we did with Kroll and Zoom in 2021 and will do with others like PopSockets in 2021-2022.
We’re proud to represent Mexico, Mesoamerica, Latin America, and the Global South when participating in different GG initiatives. For example, from 2019 to 2021, we were invited to be the only voice from Latin America on what they initially called the Neutrality Paradox, an initiative produced in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This years-long investment involved design-thinking small groups and eventually resulted in GG launching in 2021 what they call Ethos, their “philosophy and how-to guide designed to help leaders explore, act on, manage, and learn from dilemmas“. Another example is when we were asked in 2021 to help GG rethink how they can best use their annual Girl Fund inherited from the Nike company to make a sustainable impact.
GG is a key platform for better practice sharing within their global and Mexican network of nonprofits. For example, in 2018, we participated in their annual social impact academy. In 2019-2020, PSYDEH was chosen as one of only seven from their network of 120+ Mexican nonprofits to serve as a mentor for other nonprofits, an opportunity we leveraged into our gently nudging GG to use its unique position to increase impact in the Global South. We publish articles for the GG network’s benefit, e.g. this 2020 English-language article on PSYDEH’s 8-step process for empowering community-led development, or this 2020 Spanish-language piece on our novel resources diversification strategy. Most recently, we continue nudging GG to pursue strategies that result in an increase in equitable access to platform resources during their 2023 listening sessions delivered to their Latin America community of practice network.
