The Commerce Times

Creating an online social network for offline change

Together they’re only two – but they have connected and inspired thousands to do good, daily. Sparked from the frustration that social change appears impossible, Afshin Mousavian and Darius Bashar, CEO and President of Daily Challenge, developed a value-focused social networking website based on transforming online communication into community action.

Launched in November 2008, Daily Challenge, (www.dailychallenge.org) is an innovative social networking website created from the belief that many people doing small, random acts of kindness on a daily basis, can positively impact communities and create social change. Simple and easy tasks include holding the door for a stranger, saving energy by taking a cold shower and making a homeless person a sandwich.

Seeking to build the largest network of “do gooders” in the world, Daily Challenge provides a forum for connecting socially conscious individuals, organizations and companies to participate and propose hundred of acts of kindness. The growing website currently gets approximately 900 people interacting daily and between 6,000-7,000 visitors a month from over 160 cities around the world, with the great majority currently being Canadian.

“Our main goal is to make doing good, easy. We want to empower individuals to be socially conscious and work with organizations and companies that are working to make a difference. We want individuals to have the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with these groups, which is unprecedented at this point. It is about aligning ourselves with solutions, rather than the problems,” said Mousavian.

With brainstormed posters of next ideas in development, a t-shirt on display with the words “Chicks Dig Do Gooders” and the constant buzz of phones receiving updates and e-mails, their open-style office echoes the energetic, infectiously creative, and forwarding thinking personalities of Mousavian and Bashar.

Both hold extensive experience in the development and consulting of interactive and social media. Prior to Daily Challenge the two ran Apollo Media, a Toronto-based interactive marketing agency bridging traditional media to the world of e-marketing, with expertise in website design, search engine and social media optimization.

“It is important to for us to remember the fundamental differences between marketing and advertising. With advertising the idea is already there and professionals work to find creative, funny and outrageous ways to promote valueless products. We focus on marketing, where it is about coming up with a new idea based upon clear and real value,” said Bashar.

With the world in serious demand of leadership to guide individuals through uncertain economic times, organizations and companies have perfect reason to refine and re-adapt their current business strategies, according to the two entrepreneurs.

“It’s the perfect time for us to be in this market. Ten or 15 years ago, it would have been more difficult to convince companies that it is good for them to be environmentally friendly and give back to their communities. But today, it means more than anything else … it needs to be part of business mandates,” said Mousavian.

“Doing good is a good business strategy. Nearly 90% of customers are willing to change their purchasing behaviours so they can associate with companies that are doing good and helping to sustain their communities,” said Bashir.

Through integration of interactive social media platforms, Daily Challenge connects individuals and inspires communities by linking individuals to their blog, join their Facebook Group, to be followed on Twitter, browse their Flickr photostream and view their YouTube Channel. While concerns about this generation replacing real person-to-person interactions with time spent on these online networking websites, the Daily Challenge works differently: it requires them to go offline and interact with their communities to complete their online challenges.

On April 4th, the Daily Challenge is taking one online idea and creating change in Toronto communities by organizing what they call “Pay It Backward Day”. By scaling-up one of the first challenges that started the project – buying the person behind you a coffee – they hope to create a new world record. With live music and the help of volunteers, the team is attempting to beat the current record of 490 instances of a person buying the coffee order for the person behind them, set in Starbucks in the United States. A portion of all proceeds collected will be donated back into the community through the the Sick Kids Foundation.

For individuals wanting or in the process of starting their own businesses, the most important thing is just to start. Entrepreneurs need to realize that they can plan as much as they want, but things won’t go according to their plan. Start doing something now, because the more you plan the farther you get away from action, advised Mousavian.

“Our biggest mistake was waiting around and trying to make the website perfect before launching [it]. While larger corporations use this strategy, for small emerging businesses, they need to get used to launching first, fixing later, and then re-launching and fixing again. You learn what the consumer values and you modify it. By focusing on the underlying value of our project, the business will succeed in itself” said Mousavian.

“We’ve learned with experience to prefer a sloppy success to a perfect failure,” said Bashar.