Community Based Policymakers Kickedout

Every so often, I come across an inspirational piece to put out there for thought.

Here is a small company that has come up with an extremely unique idea regarding marketing a product named Bidzuku.

It seems, as a microenterprise, business investment firms tend to keep with tradition when it comes to capital ventures.

Here is the relevant scheme of Bidzuku:

Individual shopping for autos submit their criteria in an online profile. Auto dealers compete with each other and submit bids to the individual meeting their posted requirements of a vehicle.

Basically what they did was to apply online dating to the car buying market. Brilliant. No more shopping around and it expands competition to a global level.

Bidzuku from Bidzuku on Vimeo.

What about applying this to the Request For Proposals (RFP) process?

As always, it's been the big non-profit corporations that are always the successful ones in securing the grants and contracts. And, as always, these big institutions are the ones who design the RFPs in the first place.

Allow me to provide a working example, Cornell University.  Here you have a Non Governmental Organization which maintains the databases of research while developing future policy for child welfare.

All the while, Cornell is strategically becoming the leader in policy development through their training reimbursement programs in child welfare, locking the little business man and innovation out of the public policy cycle.

What if, government took the concept of social networking to a new level.

Small businesses and microenterprises submit their proposals and funding criteria to profiles in an online new marketing network.  Foundations and government would not only search for its needs, but it also becomes a learning experience, directly bringing social issues to policymakers.

In essence, this is community-based policymaking.

This type of process, not asking for proposals to meet the criteria of the government, was thriving before the 1980's when it switched over to the RFP.

The time has come to stop telling us what you want and let us tell you what we need.

I was always told that democracy contained a component called dissent.  If there is no dissent, meaning a robust challenge to theory with the ability to withstand the test of time, then there is no democracy.

Now apply that to the area of child welfare.

There is no challenge because everything is a secret, kept hidden within a community of major institutions.

Let the community be policymakers once again.  We do not wish to be kickedout any more.