The philanthropist explains how his website Crowdrise seeks to combine the experience of social networking and the substance of being involved in good causes. Engagement with an issue you care about shouldn’t feel like a burden or an obligation, he says.

Edward Norton: My name is Edward Norton.  I founded Crowdrise with three partners.  It’s an internet platform-type of a site that is engineered specifically to facilitate and maximize individual fundraising efforts, whether in the context of an individual wanting to support a cause that they care about or for an organization building a platform through which they reach down through their support base and engineer grassroots, crowd-sourced fundraising.

We felt that there was a gap between the experience that people have when they network for social purposes and the substance of being engaged in a good cause.  In a nutshell, to us Crowdrise was like, let’s try to fuse these two things.  Let’s try to, let's try to pull some of the substance from one side of the equation in with the fun of the other side and make something that’s really altogether new, which is a different way of expressing your identity.

Recorded December 9, 2010
Interviewed by Max Miller
Directed by Jonathan Fowler
Produced by Elizabeth Rodd