Yes, admittedly this is another company blog.  But before you stop reading, let me throw out some bullet points to help you decide if this blog is for you.

The goals of this blog are:

1. To be a place for us (GiveLoop members, our readers, and colleagues) to share our thoughts and explorations in the concepts of “transparency”, “openness”, and “accountability” as it exists on the Internet.
2. To be a place for discussion and debate of the above-mentioned issues.
3. To be a place for us (GiveLoop members, our readers, and colleagues) and others to practice (what we believe to be) transparency and openness on the Internet.

As a quick introduction and background, my name is Brian Foo, and I am launching a company called GiveLoop with a good friend, roommate, and colleague, Todd Spitz.  Todd and I met each other while attending Columbia University’s engineering school (SEAS), where we graduated in 2008 with a mechanical engineering and computer science degree respectively.  We’ve both acquired a taste for entrepreneurship early on in our lives, and more seriously towards the end of our college careers.

Personally, I’ve been interested in the intersection of transparency and the Internet in recent years- particularly corporate transparency.  I launched a website called Project Label in 2007, which strives to produce “people-powered company nutrition labels.”  Although Project Label still exists, I’ve run into some very clear barriers and frustrations with corporate transparency on the Web, which is a very young field with very little standards and is particularly prone to things like “greenwashing” and carefully-crafted PR.

GiveLoop was born as a slightly different approach to addressing the transparency problem on the Web.  Todd and I expressed interest in the concept of “tracking dollars” to see and understand exactly how money is transacted and moved through different entities.  When faced with this daunting task, we decided to focus the problem a bit to online fundraising, a space that we believe would particularly benefit from being more transparent.

By no means do Todd and I consider “experts” in the space of online fundraising or transparency on the Web and acknowledge the great amount of research and discussions already happening.  We want this to be a place of discovery, debate, and development of issues having to do with transparency, openness, and accountability on the Internet.  We hope you enjoy reading and participating in the discussion!