The eBay Way 2004.11.29
The site's founder wanted to know how best to give. He asked, he listened. Here's what he learned After becoming one of the richest 31-year-olds in history, eBay Inc. (EBAY ) founder Pierre Omidyar cleared out his cubicle, sold his modest home, and set off for his native Paris with his wife, Pam.
在成为历史上最富有的 31 岁年轻人之一后，eBay 公司的创始人皮埃尔·奥米迪亚搬出了自己的蜗居，卖掉了自己的 小房子，和妻子帕姆搬到出生地巴黎。
It was a change born partly of the Omidyars' need to escape Silicon Valley's bubble frenzy of 1999, when they got mobbed at cocktail parties and endlessly hit(1w)1 on by business-plan-pushing MBAs.
部分原因是奥米迪亚想逃离 1999 年硅谷投资热的泡沫，那时他们常在鸡尾酒会上遇到聚众滋扰，不断地遭到满脑 子商业计划的工商管理硕士们的骚扰。
But the Paris chapter also stemmed(2p)1 from a deeper dilemma.
移居巴黎的另一个深层考虑是，
From the moment Omidyar became rich, it was apparent to his friends that he was overwhelmingly uncomfortable -embarrassed even -- by the money.
自从奥米迪亚成为富翁以来，他的朋友们发现金钱使他变得极不自在，甚至让他倍感困扰。
"Don't make it grow(3p)2," the accidental billionaire once told an investment adviser, so fearful was he of the burden of his multiplying commas.
这位亿万富翁曾经告诉一个投资顾问：“不要让我的财富增长。”他非常害怕不断增长的财富会成为一种束缚。
In Paris, the Minitel-entranced French didn't care much about the Web or the e-commerce mogul.
在巴黎，奥米迪亚很少考虑网络和电子商务。
So Omidyar had the time and space to sip black tea at smoky cafés and ponder his next big question.
他拥有自己的空间，也有时间坐在烟雾缭绕的咖啡馆里享用红茶和考虑以后的问题。
What does a ridiculously rich man with so little interest in money do?
一个如此富有却又对钱不太感兴趣的人该怎么办呢？
Solving the first part of the problem was easy: The Omidyars had already vowed to give away virtually all their wealth.
想要解决这个问题，第一步很简单，奥米迪亚早已决定把所有的财富都捐出去；
The next part was harder: how to spend their billions and have an impact as immense as eBay's.
第二步就要困难多了，即如何把他的巨额财富花出去并使它们产生像 eBay 一样的巨大影响？
Today, Omidyar's frizzy ponytail has turned into a short, spiky haircut.
现在，奥米迪亚卷曲的马尾辫已经变成了一根根直立的短发。
The shorts and black socks worn with gnarled flip-flops have morphed into a uniform of pressed pants and leather dress shoes.
短裤、黑袜和拖鞋的搭配也换成了笔挺的西装和皮鞋，山羊胡子早已成为历史。
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The goatee is gone. And the '96 VW has been traded in for a Mini Cooper.
1996 年款的大众汽车也换成了宝马家族的 Mini Cooper。
After the Paris sojourn, the Omidyars decided to settle with their two kids far from Silicon Valley, where it bothered them that teachers and cops can't afford to live in the communities they serve, in favor of a gated community outside Las Vegas.
在巴黎呆了一段时间后又回到美国的奥米迪亚决定远离硅谷，和两个孩子在拉斯韦加斯郊外的社区定居，他们并不 喜欢硅谷的生活，因为那里昂贵的消费只会把普通人拒之门外。
In June, Omidyar, who still serves as eBay's chairman, showed up at the company's annual meeting in a crisp suit with a shirt and tie.
2004 年６月，作为 eBay 公司的董事会主席，奥米迪亚身着西装领带出席了公司的年会。
TOTAL STRANGERS
信任陌生人
Omidyar's thoughts about his philanthropy have matured even more than his appearance.
奥米迪亚对慈善事业的看法逐渐深入和成熟。
Just as his vision of the perfect marketplace revolutionized(5w)2 commerce, so too are his ideas about philanthropy likely to disrupt the rules of traditional giving.
正如他对完美市场的看法已经改变了商业世界那样，他对慈善的想法也有可能会颠覆传统的捐献规则。
Omidyar is at the forefront of a new trend that is starting to blur the old church-state divisions between the for-profit and non-profit worlds, creating structural shifts that could lead to a new, hybrid philanthropy.
奥米迪亚正在引领一股新的潮流，它可能会模糊盈利和非盈利机构之间以往井水不犯河水的界限，从而创造出全新 的慈善理念。
In March, he shocked the philanthropic community with news that instead of investing purely in nonprofits,
the
Omidyar Network would house(6c)2 both a foundation and an arm that would also invest in for-profit companies. （3.48）
2004 年 3 月份，奥米迪亚震惊了整个慈善世界， 他宣布奥米迪亚网络将建立一个基金会和一个也向盈利机构投资的 组织，而不是纯粹只向非盈利机构投资。
All the money made from the stakes in those companies -- chosen by Omidyar and his team of due-diligence specialists for their emphasis on open information, giving power to the little guy, and fostering social capital -- would flow back(7m)1 into(8c)3 the investing arm to leverage into yet more charitable giving. (3.7)
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这些被投资的公司由奥米迪亚和他的专家团队根据公开信息来选择，在扶助中小企业的同时培育社会资本，而投资 的所有收益最后还会用于慈善事业。
"I don't see why we ought to make an artificial distinction that says for-profit is all about making money and only nonprofit is about helping people," says Omidyar in an interview in the library of the network's offices, which sit amid the thrift shops and antique stores in blue-collar Redwood City, Calif.
奥米迪亚在办公室的图书馆中接受采访时说，“我不知道为什么要在盈利和非盈利事业之间人为地设定界限，似乎 盈利就是为了赚钱，只有非盈利才是帮助人。”他的办公室就设在加州的蓝领城市——雷德伍德城，坐落在简陋的 商店和古董店之间。
What influenced Omidyar most in this decision was the inspiration he took from watching eBay users learn to trust 125 million total strangers.
奥米迪亚之所以会做出这个决定，最大的灵感来自于 eBay，他在观察网上交易时看到了 eBay 的 1.25 亿用户如何学 会信任陌生人。
Disabled people on public assistance turned into self-supporting entrepreneurs; Guatemalan villagers started selling their handwoven wares to people on Park Avenue.
在这里， 需要社会资助的残疾人变成了自力更生的企业家， 危地马拉的村民开始把手工编织品卖给住在 Park Avenue 的居民。
Says Omidyar: "You have to ask yourself, is it really true that business can only be about making money? And is it really true that if you want good things to happen in a community it has to be through a nonprofit?"
奥米迪亚说：“我们应该扪心自问，商业真的就只是为了赚钱吗？如果我们希望对社区做一些好事，真的就只能通 过非盈利的活动吗？”
That's not the only radical move(9m)2 Omidyar is making.
这并不是奥米迪亚惟一的激进之举。
In many ways, Omidyar is the anomaly among BusinessWeek's Top 50 givers.
在很多方面，奥米迪亚都是《商业周刊》前 50 名大慈善家中的另类。
Philanthropists like Bill Gates, Gordon Moore, and Michael Dell went beyond old-school giving, where you give your money to a foundation, which then doles it out for you.
像比尔·盖茨、戈登·穆尔和迈克尔·戴尔这样的慈善家已经超越了传统的捐赠方式——他们把钱捐给基金会，然后由 基金会发放出去。
Instead, the new superphilanthropists applied the same brilliance that built(10b)1 their businesses to their philanthropic causes. They are deep on vision and heavily hands-on.
而这些新一代超级慈善家们正把建立商业帝国的智慧运用到慈善事业上，他们眼界开阔，注重实效。
Omidyar is pioneering a third way, a philanthropy that's fanatically bottom-up.
奥米迪亚正在开辟第三种方式——一种被彻底颠覆的慈善举动。
It's anti-vision. Anti-dictate. And, in a sense, Omidyar isn't even choosing how his $10 billion is given away -- or to what causes it goes.
这是一种完全不同寻常的方式，它并不直观，也绝非一言堂。从某种意义上讲，奥米迪亚甚至不会选择如何捐出他 的 100 亿美元或者把它们花在什么地方。
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He wants you to do that. How?
他希望你来做出选择，怎么做呢？
For starters, there's omidyar.net, where Pierre and Pam recently opened up a conversation with the world to discuss the direction(11m)3 of their philanthropy.
对于入门者来说，请先登陆 omidyar.net，最近皮埃尔和帕姆在那里开了一个论坛，与来自全世界的人讨论如何进行 捐赠。
People already engaged in solving social problems know a lot more about how to fix them, they figure, than a cloistered elite ever could.
相比那些不问世事的网络精英来说， 已经在积极参与解决社会问题的人对此应该了解更多， 他们的看法会更加深入、 全面。
Secondly, the foundation arm of the Omidyar Network, which still hands out the vast bulk of the money, focuses on grants to individuals who are already creating social change through their nonprofits.
此外，奥米迪亚网络旗下的基金会也在不断向外捐赠，主要集中在通过非盈利活动来改变社会的个人身上。
The critical tool of these mostly smallish groups is the Internet, which enables people to take tiny ideas and give them a global launch(12m)4, in much the same way Omidyar created what fans call the "first truly democratic marketplace" after selling, among other things, his broken laser pointer online. (It went for 14 bucks.)
互联网就是这些小团体的主要工具，人们可以受到一个小点子的启发，把它变成一个全球性的事业。这和奥米迪亚 创造的网上交易平台非常相似，eBay 就是在奥米迪亚在网上卖出很多商品（包括已经坏掉的激光指示器，卖了 14 美元）后建立的，它被用户们称为“第一个真正民主的市场”。
By taking out the middleman and shifting decision-making power from experts to practitioners, Omidyar believes something more efficient and innovative -- and with a far bigger impact -- will happen.
在避免了中间人并且把决策权从专家手中转交给真正的参与者后，奥米迪亚相信一种更有效、更新颖、更具影响力 的慈善方式即将诞生。
"This is a revolution(13w)3, and you can hear the ice cracking," says Bill Drayton, founder of Omidyar grantee Ashoka, which seeds social entrepreneurs.
专门培育社会创业者的 Ashoka 机构就是奥米迪亚基金的受益人，它的创建者比尔·德雷顿说：“这是一次革命，你已 经能听到冰层破裂的声音。”
Adds Dennis Whittle, CEO of Global Giving, another Omidyar recipient that provides an online marketplace for nonprofit projects to hook up with funders:
另外一个奥米迪亚基金的受益人——Global Giving 基金的首席执行官丹尼斯·惠特说：
"What I like most about Pierre is that he's not about doing wild, wow things himself. He's about enabling millions of people to do wow things themselves."
“皮埃尔让我最欣赏的一点就是，他绝不会头脑发热，也从来不会一个人把所有伟大的事情都承担起来，而是帮助 别人，让他们自己去开创事业。”
Rather than dictating bold prescriptions, then, the nonprofits Omidyar funds flank problems, attacking(14w)4 them from the sides.(3.27)
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Consider the story of the
toilets.
非盈利的奥米迪亚基金从来不武断行事，其资助方式由表及里，希望能够彻底解决问题。有一个关于厕所的故事能 够说明这一点。
Two years ago, Whittle's Global Giving designed a site that allowed anyone, from anywhere in the world who was properly screened and vetted, to post projects for funding.
两年前，惠特的 Global Giving 基金设计了一个网站，全世界任何地方的人都可以在上面提出希望接受资助的项目。
One such group was a slew of schoolteachers in Coimbatore, India.
来自印度科因巴特尔的一群教师在上面发布了自己的项目：
Every year, they watched scores of girls leave school when they hit puberty. And they had a sneaking suspicion as to why.
他们每年都发现很多女孩在开始发育时离开学校，老师们怀疑这和学校的厕所有关。
ONE SIMPLE FIX
勿以善小而不为
The teachers posted a small, bedraggled project on Global Giving -- so tiny, in fact, that it initially embarrassed Whittle, who had quit his job as a lead economist at the World Bank to start(15m)5 the nonprofit.
于是这些老师在 Global Giving 基金的网站上发布了一个很小的项目广告，项目如此微不足道， 以致于惠特刚刚看到 这个项目时甚至有点困窘，当时他已经辞去世界银行首席经济学家的工作，全身心投入到非盈利社会事业中来。
The project ad read: "New Toilet Block for School. $5,000." Within a few weeks, four donors from around the U.S., including a writer from New York City and a banker from J.P. Morgan (JPM ), put up the money.
项目是这样写的：“学校的新公厕，5000 美元。”几周之后，来自全美的 4 个捐献者提供了这笔资金，其中包括一个 纽约的作家和一个摩根大通的银行家。
In less than three months, the school had its own separate toilet block for girls; the donors had thank-you letters and photos from the kids.
不到 3 个月的时间，学校就有了女生专用厕所。捐赠者也收到了孩子们寄来的感谢信和照片。
Turns out the teachers had guessed right: The girls were dropping out in droves because of the embarrassment they felt once they started menstruating and had no private facilities.
事实证明老师们的猜测是正确的。当女孩子开始来例假时，她们会因为没有专用厕所而感到害羞，从而成群结队地 退学。
Now, two years later, 100 of them have stayed in school because of this tiny addition.
现在事情已经过去了两年，因为这个微小的改变，100 个女孩子留在了学校。
Within 10 years, Global Giving estimates that 440 will have stayed through graduation.
Global Giving 基金预计，10 年里会有 440 个女生一直呆到毕业。
And the ripple effect from this one simple fix is huge, given the fact that attaining an education makes it much more likely some of these girls will eventually climb(16m)6 out of(17c)4 poverty.
这是一件非常小的善事，但它的影响却是巨大的。接受了教育使这些女生更有可能会因此而摆脱贫困。
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With conventional giving, whether it be to the Red Cross, United Way, or small local charities -- once you write your check, you're often clueless as to any particular outcome achieved.
在传统的捐赠方式中，不管是捐给红十字会、United Way，还是当地的一些小基金会，一旦你捐出了钱，经常不知 道这些钱最终去了哪里、产生了怎样的效果。
What's unique about Omidyar's projects is that, like eBay, there's often a transparent system in place that allows donors to monitor where their money goes(18m)7 and who receives it.
奥米迪亚项目的独特之处就在于，这是一个像 eBay 一样透明的系统，捐献者能够监测所捐款项的走向，了解谁将 成为最终的受益者。
DonorsChoose, for which Omidyar became a major funder this month, is a case in point.
DonorsChoose 网站就是这样一个例子，奥米迪亚刚刚在 2004 年 12 月成为它的主要捐助者。
The site allows people to become philanthropists for as little as $10, monitoring their money's journey every step(19m)8 of the way.(4.13)
在这个网站，每个人都能成为慈善家，最小的捐赠额是 10 美元，捐赠者还能时刻监测资金流向。
It works like this: Any public-school teacher in New York City, North Carolina, the Bay Area, or Chicago can post a project that needs funding.
它的工作方式是这样的：任何纽约、北卡罗来纳、旧金山湾区或者芝加哥的公立学校的教师都可以提出需要资助的 项目。
Last year, Cynthia Rosado, a first-grade teacher at P.S. 169 in Brooklyn, where kids often went without pencils or paper, put up a request on the site called "Is That a Fact?" that asked for a set of nonfiction books.
2003 年，布鲁克林 169 小学的一年级教师辛茜娅·罗萨多在网上提出了一个标题为“这是事实吗？”的请求，希望能 够获得一批合适的非小说类的文学读物。
The kids were fascinated by narrative nonfiction but didn't have a single copy of such a book in their classroom. Project cost: $244, including shipping and fulfillment.
这些孩子很喜欢叙事类的读物，但教室里面连一本这样的书都没有。项目花费 244 美元，包括运费和包装费。
That was just the start(20m)9. Over the course of the past year, donors from 12 states, plus Canada and Australia, have paid for 42 projects, transforming Rosado's formerly bare classroom into one as rich in resources as that of a private school.
这只是一个开端而已。在 2003 年的一年中，有来自 12 个州（还有加拿大和澳大利亚）的捐赠者资助了 42 个项目， 现在，罗萨多以前空空荡荡的教室已经完全可以和私立学校媲美了。
Omidyar's donations to nonprofits are also making a difference abroad.
奥米迪亚对非盈利事业的捐助也在海外产生了巨大影响。
With the help of the foundation arm's donations to the Grameen Foundation USA, 1,152 women in Uganda now have their own businesses selling wireless phone time to villagers.
通过向美国的 Grameen 基金会提供资助，已经有 1152 名乌干达妇女开始了自己的事业——向村民提供无线公用电 话服务。
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The income enables them to build homes and send their kids to school.
其收入能够让她们盖房子，供孩子上学。
In India, women sell classes in computer centers, usually earning a living wage by their fifth month of operation.
在印度，妇女们在计算机中心推销电脑课程，通常情况下，她们第五个月的收入就足以养家糊口了。
Like the nonprofits Omidyar invests in, the for-profits also use technology to hand more and more power to regular people.
与奥米迪亚投资的非盈利事业一样，他投资的盈利事业也在使用新技术来造福普通人。
The for-profit investing is in its earliest stages(21m)10, but so far the network has invested in open-source software site Source Forge; Web-collaboration software maker Socialtext, and the gaming firm Linden Lab, creator of an online virtual world called Second Life, where users can create a virtual identity online.
他对于盈利事业的投资还处于初级阶段，到目前为止，他投资的公司包括开放源代码的网站 Source Forge、网络协 作软件制造商 Socialtext 和游戏公司 Linden Lab， 他创造了一个名为“第二生命”的网络虚拟世界， 用户可以在网上创 建一个虚拟的身份。
The game-playing allows "residents" to form social relationships. Some have even started(22m)11 businesses on the site that actually make money.
通过玩游戏，居民可以建立自己的社会关系，现在甚至有些人已经开始利用网上业务真正赚到钱了。
The Omidyars didn't start out wanting to radicalize philanthropy.
奥米迪亚及其同事并不想把慈善事业激进化。
At first, they did what anyone in their situation would do.
他们最初的做法和所有人一样。
They studied the Gates's giving. They visited world-renowned foundations, including the Packard Foundation.
他们研究了盖茨的捐赠方式，参观了世界著名的基金会，其中包括 Packard 基金会。
There, Chairman Susan Packard Orr told them, "don't do what we do. Do something completely different."
在那里，基金会主席苏珊·奥尔告诉他们：“不要做我们做过的事情，做一些与众不同的事情。”
Little did she know just how innovative the Omidyars' brand of giving would turn out to be.
但她也许想不到奥米迪亚的捐赠方式会如此有新意。
By Michelle Conlin With Rob Hof in Redwood City, Calif.
作者：米切尔·康林（Michelle Conlin）与罗布·霍夫（Rob Hof）于加州雷德伍德城 翻译：马治国
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