Facebook Co-Founder Launches Non-Profit Platform Called Jumo

Today, Facebook co-founder and My.BarackObama.com alum Chris Hughes announced the soft launch of Jumo, his new philanthropic start-up that works to match do-gooders with appropriate causes. Currently, the Jumo site is merely an elegantly designed homepage that announces Hughes’s mission to “bring together everyday individuals and organizations to speed the pace of global change. We connect people to the issues, organizations, and individuals relevant to them to foster lasting relationships and meaningful action.” Hughes told us, however, that the site will later be organized much like a social network — with profiles for individual users that contain a collection of information that they have shared and used, pages for organizations created both by the orgs in question and others, and issue pages that serve as a kind of discussion of the topics at hand. Hughes says that the idea is to make sure that Jumo can get the most relevant information possible to its users, so that they can foster on-going relationships with social organizations to do the most good. As a result, the current homepage features a rather intriguing survey box that asks the site visitor an array of questions from, “If you had a daughter tomorrow, which would you name her?” to “Would you say the world is getting better or worse?” Upon answering these queries, you can also submit your e-mail address to get more information as it comes. The site itself came about after a period of reflection on Hughes’s part. The Obama campaign came and went, and he started thinking about how he could apply social media principles gleaned from Facebook and My.BarackObama.com to have the maximum impact on the world. While he was impressed by efforts following catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti, Hughes thought we could be doing more. “I think watching what happened after Haiti was hard for everyone,” he says. “The fact that so much money was raised is just a testament to the fact that people really do care and help.” Still, he applies the “don’t just give during the holidays — give all year round” principle to the situation. “I was frustrated to see that moment of engagement not functioning as part of a much larger process of supporting those organizations to help ensure that tragedies like Haiti not happen again,” he said. Currently, Hughes is hiring a team to run the site from its Soho office. According to the job posting, he’s “looking to hire hard-working individuals who value intellectual challenge, appreciate the importance of online networking technology, and, most importantly, want to change the world.”