VIRTUAL MARKETS FOR DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
Simple Means to Provide Resources to Small Projects

The economics of information seems to help illuminate the way institutions grow. For example, it is believed that large organizations developed in the 19th and 20th centuries because it was more efficient to organize, manage and utilize certain kinds of information using bureaucratic structures and processes than using market structures and processes. It has been suggested that the Internet’s e-marketplaces may now make many information activities more efficient than they have beeen in traditional markets, and that in response optimum firm size will in many cases be reduced as firms outsource operations that were previously done internally.

Development assistance has been a relatively information intensive business, and many aid agencies are large. Moreover, many aid projects in the past have had to be large, since the cost of planning and implementing projects had many relatively fixed components. High information costs and high risks tended to imply complex bureaucratic processes.

There are a few examples of organizations that are pioneering in the use of the Internet to create virtual spaces in which people who need help and people who are willing to offer such help can interact. The result may be a really new, and potentially very good, way to do development assistance. These appear to be examples of virtual spaces in which people can cooperate without leaving home!

Donating money:

The Virtual Foundation
The Virtual Foundation is a online philanthropy program which supports grassroots initiatives around the world. Carefully screened community improvement projects in the fields of environment, health and sustainable economic activity are posted on its web site. They can be read and funded by online donors.
http://www.virtualfoundation.org/

DevelopmentSpace
This is the first initiative of ManyFutures, a company interested in (in its own words) “revolutionizing the global development industry by creating a real marketplace in development, with much more transparency, competition, innovation, access, and impact.” The site allows investments in small projects, and the investments can be quite small.
http://www.developmentspace.com/

Donating Services:

NetAid
NetAid Online Volunteering: Connects volunteers to poverty-fighting organizations around the world via the Internet. Opportunities to do volunteer research, writing, programming, networking and other activities without leaving home.
http://www.netaid.org/

Earthwatch
The mission of Earthwatch Institute is to promote the sustainable conservation of natural resources and cultural heritage by creating partnerships among scientists, the general public, educators, and businesses. While Earthwatch started its program allowing people to volunteer to help on field research projects using paper, it is now utilizing online approaches.
http://www.earthwatch.org/

Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA)
VITA was created as a virtual marketplace in which people from developing nations who needed specific technical information could be placed in contact with volunteers from developed nations who could provide the information. It has made hundreds of thousands of such links, and now has posted a large body of technological information that came out of that process and appeared generally useful. It is now in the process of restructuring its volunteer and inquiry services, and it will be interesting to see how they adapt it to the Internet era.
http://www.vita.org/Default.htm

Donating Things:

Computer Aid International
Computer Aid International has already sent close to 10,000 fully refurbished computers to 55 different countries in the developing world. Computer Aid International can collect a donated computer, put it through its recycling program, and deliver it fully tested and working to a school desk in South Africa or El Salvador.
http://www.computeraid.org/index.htm

Gifts in Kind
A charitable organization (claimed by its web site to be the 7th largest in the world) that accepts in-kind donations from top manufacturers and retailers (including 40 percent of the Fortune 500 companies) and distributes them to a network of more than 50,000 charitable nonprofits around the world.
http://www.giftsinkind.org/

Free Computers
This page of the Development Gateway Portal's ICT for Development Topic resources has a number of sites that provide donated computers, or that can help pay the costs of the transfer of donated materials to developing nations.
http://www.developmentgateway.org/node/133831/browser/?keyword%5flist=409428&country%5flist=0

Donating Computer services:

Fight AIDS @ Home
FightAIDS@Home is a computational research project that allows people to link their computers to assist AIDS research; the community involved has collectively donated massive computing power that is used to model the evolution of drug resistance and design anti-HIV drugs necessary to fight AIDS.
http://www.fightaidsathome.org/

I have also found a couple of websites that provide links to other sites matching volunteers to projects:

International/Overseas Volunteer Opportunities
This is an index of links to Web sites that provide information about outside-the-U.S. service opportunities for U.S. citizens (and any other country, for the most part). Opportunities may vary in length from one week to several years. Many of these organizations require participants to pay a program fee as well as their own travel expenses.
http://www.serviceleader.org/advice/overseas.html

Web Sites To Find Volunteer Opportunities
This index provided by the Digital Opportunity Channel offers links to major regional and nationwide sites in the U.S. and Canada that provide updated lists of volunteer opportunities at various different organizations. While the sites are in the U.S. and Canada, many offer opportunities to volunteer internationally.
http://www.digitalopportunity.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi?root=2822&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eserviceleader%2Eorg%2Fvv%2Fforvols%2Ehtml