Wanted: A Thousand Good Palisadians

By JOHN HARLOW | Special to the Palisadian-Post

Up to 1,000 Palisadians are to be “given” $10 each to donate to the local good cause of their choice with the launch of a potentially groundbreaking charitable phone app called Karma.

The app, due to be test-launched exclusively in Pacific Palisades on July 4, has been underwritten by businessman Prince Alexander von Fürstenberg, the son of fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, who was also raised by his stepfather, media mogul Barry Diller.

Karma has been designed by some of the same team behind well-known dating apps.

It is designed to encourage people to engage in “social good,” by donating money or time, but with a twist: It contains an algorithm that measures the good works and registers them publicly on social feed in the form of covetable “karma points.”

The big idea is to turn charitable giving into an online game, as well as leveraging the desire to be recognized by peers. It is not expected to appeal to anonymous givers.

While the Fürstenbergs are based largely in New York, the Palisades has been chosen as a unique and discreet test-bed for Karma thanks to connections between the family and the Chabad Jewish Community Center of Pacific Palisades on Sunset—although it aspires to be non-denominational, with minimal cultural bias about what counts as good work.

“The Palisades has a strong sense of community, a very diverse population and is very compact—so people who want to start out by making the starter donation of $10, which we hope they will match, all know which local cause they want to support,” Holly McKay, spokesman for Karma, told the Palisadian-Post. “After that, we hope they get the habit.”

Local good causes, whether it be Palisades Beautiful, Friends of the Palisades Library or the Dillon Henry Foundation, are encouraged to sign up as potential benefactors on the website, due to start working on Wednesday, June 13.

Alexander, who was raised in the Carlyle Hotel in New York before becoming director of the Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation, is said to have invented the idea of updating charitable giving at a very traditional East Coast charity event—which he felt went on too long and diverted too much energy from charity itself.

He also wanted to create something that would grow by itself over decades to come—an honorable aspiration for a man whose family of soldiers and bishops emerged in the bloodshed of 13th century Swabia.

To create Karma the foundation recruited a respected start-up entrepreneur, David Semerad of San Francisco-based STRV Labs, which has created more than 100 mobile apps, including “below the hood” coding work on dating apps such as Tinder, J-Date and Surge.

“They bring people together, and now, starting in the Palisades, we hope that Karma will do that too,” Semerad said last week.

The Karma team, backed by Rabbi Zushe Cunin of the Chabad, have set themselves a bold target—1,000 downloads on the soft launch on July 4.

After that it will go first national, and then, if it works, global.

The national release will follow on Aug. 8. 2018—because, apparently, the prince likes all eights. Palisadians can check it out or pre-register at karmaapp.org.