Dear President Obama,
We would like to congratulate you on your distinguished honor as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. We respect and admire your efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples around the world, particularly when it comes to your advocacy for achieving change from the bottom up.
It is in this spirit that we write you to offer a recommendation for how to use your prize - one that will spark further grassroots investment in bringing peace, economic development and opportunity to individuals across the U.S. and around the world.
We believe an impactful use of the $1.4 million reward would be to offer the funds as a financial incentive for others, a matching donation that would engage Americans and individuals around the world in the spirit of generosity. By significantly multiplying the impact of your gift, you would have the opportunity to share with the world your true commitment to bringing about transformational change from the bottom up. And what better way to use this prize than to leverage it to raise multiple millions more towards the pursuit of peace?
Just as your Presidential campaign inspired millions of Americans to donate small amounts to bring about the change they believed in, your Nobel Peace Prize matching campaign could inspire a groundswell of global generosity to support the amazing work being done by non-profit and non-governmental organizations all over the world. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, when organizations working to build stronger communities are struggling, this signal of support would be a powerful call-to-action for not only the American people, but for the entire international community.
We founded GlobalGiving.org nearly eight years ago to connect individuals to the causes they care about most here in the U.S. and around the world. As former World Bank executives we saw the impact individuals empowered with the proper resources and a commitment to bringing about change can have in their communities and beyond.
In the years since our founding, we have been consistently inspired and awed by the altruism, spirit and dedication our donors, project leaders and supporters have in their pursuit of making the world a better place. Once armed with the knowledge that for as little as $10 you can help educate a girl in Afghanistan, offer clean drinking water to a school in Kenya, provide solar energy to low-income families right here in the U.S., or support one of the thousands of other earth changing ideas just waiting to be funded - there is no end to the energy an individual can muster in pursuit of change.
We urge you to consider taking the honor you have received and using it as a launching pad to further your advocacy for service, generosity and commitment to others by creating a matching campaign through GlobalGiving.org. This platform will allow individuals to support the causes they care about most, whether it's microloans to help a woman start a business in Ghana, a school uniform to help educate an orphan in India, or training for a child with Autism right here in Washington, D.C. Your offer of a matching gift will challenge the world to give back in this time of great need.
We would welcome the opportunity to work with you and your Administration in the future to build peace and opportunity from the ground up.
Sincerely,
Dennis Whittle co-founder and CEO of GlobalGiving.org
and
Mari Kuraishi, co-founder and President of GlobalGiving.org