Frequently Asked Questions

What is Samasource's mission?
Who benefits from Samasource?
What is a Samasource Service Partner?
How does Samasource find and select partners?
What training does Samasource provide?
What impact does Samasource have on the U.S. economy?
How does Samasource create work and sustainable livelihoods in poor regions?
How is Samasource different from traditional outsourcing?
Why is Samasource a nonprofit?
What is remote work? What type of work does Samasource offer?
Why can't American workers do those jobs? Why should African and Asian workers want to?
What makes Samasource different from oDesk and Elance?
How can my organization apply to be a Samasource partner?
From where does Samasource receive its funding?
How can I give work to Samasource?
How can I donate to Samasource?
Does Samasource have 501(c)(3) status?
How can I give in-kind to Samasource?
What else can I do to support Samasource?
How can I contact Samasource?
How can I give feedback to the Samasource team?
Where else can I go to learn more about Samasource?

What is Samasource's mission?

Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means "equal". Our mission is to reduce poverty by connecting women, youth, and refugees to digital work.

Who Benefits from Samasource?

Women, Youth, and Refugees Who Get Work

Work is fundamental to human dignity, but for half the world‚Äôs population living on less than $3 a day in regions with very high unemployment, decent work is hard to find. At least one billion women, 150M youth, and 42M refugees are thus vulnerable to exploitation due to their social status or location in a marginalized region, fueling a range of social problems, including distress migration to slums, human trafficking, forced labor, and recruitment by gangs and terrorist organizations.

Women often suffer violence because they are not viewed as economically valuable, but as income earners, women invest more in health and education for their children. Only 1% of foreign aid is spent on gender-specific issues, and greater attention is needed to address problems affecting women.

Youth unemployment may lead to alienation from society and democratic political processes, giving rise to social unrest.

Refugees have few ways to earn a living, and have been shown to benefit more from cash-for-work programs like Samasource, which create positive chain reactions that boost their purchasing power, than other livelihoods programs in refugee camps.

Samasource's programs have a powerful impact not only on our beneficiaries' incomes, but also on their sense of self worth. According to Maria, founder of the Samasource-Incubated Women's Digital League of Pakistan, " For me and other women in Pakistan, Samasource is our own ray of light, our way of escaping the claustrophobic environment surrounding us." Samasource has raised the income of many workers in our network by over 200% in just a few months.

Read additional stories to learn more about our impact.

Customers Who Give Work

Our customers are organizations that hire Samasource's workers to provide a range of digital services. Our customers receive quality work at competitive prices with the benefit of a local customer service team in San Francisco. They also play an active role in helping Samasource fight poverty by providing work to the people who need it most -- women, youth, and refugees in poor regions. With Samasource, our customers celebrate the diversity of talent that exists globally. We have worked with dozens of clients to date, including Benetech, GoodGuide, Stanford University Library, the Young Presidents' Organization - World Presidents' Organization (YPO - WPO) and many others.

What is a Samasource Service Partner?

Samasource Service Partners manage and pay the workers in our network. They include non-profit organizations, grassroots businesses with a social mission, and educational institutions that work with women, youth, and refugees living in poverty. These individuals generally have at least a secondary school education, but are cut off from job markets due to their location or social status. Individuals in many of the regions in which Samasource operates face formal unemployment rates of up to 70%.

Our service partners must meet a range of criteria, described here. In general, they must:

Reduce poverty in a low-income region with untapped human capital (we include low-income countries as defined by the World Bank, and low-income regions within other countries as defined by the Columbia University Global Distribution of Poverty Dataset ).
Work with women, youth aged 18 to 30, and refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Pay workers a living wage (as defined by the Fair Wage Guide) in the country in which they operate.

Currently, we partner with 20 organizations in seven countries in Africa and South Asia. Please visit our Partner Page to learn more about each one. To apply to become a Samasource Service Partner, please contact us.

How does Samasource find and select Service Partners?

We rely on stringent criteria to find and select our Service Partners. A Stanford Law School team developed our screening criteria, designed to ensure that we help people in high poverty areas receive valuable training and life-changing income through reliable partners that share our passion for quality and social impact. Most of our partners are located in the poorest countries in the world, where skilled workers face unemployment rates of up to 70%. Samasource is leading the way in developing guiding principles for this type of work.

In addition, our comprehensive due diligence process requires technical quality and fiscal responsibility of our partners. This process includes financial review, reference checks with former clients, management and staff interviews, and site visits. During our diligence, we verify that partners have reliable power, computer and internet access with sufficient bandwidth. Fewer than 20% of firms who apply are selected for our exclusive network.

What training does Samasource provide?

All Samasource Service Partners are required to complete training before completing work for our customers. Our free, in-person training bridges workers' existing skill sets with market needs to ensure that every worker builds valuable skills. Core training modules cover technical skills, project management skills, quality assurance processes, and general business and communication standards.

What impact does Samasource have on the U.S. economy?

The work that Samasource does creates a win-win situation: women, youth, and refugees benefit from a chance to use their skills and earn life-changing income, and our customers benefit from aqualified, motivated workforce. Samasource workers are not competing for domestic jobs; they are supplementing them. According to many reputable economists, for every $1.00 of work that is directed overseas, approximately $1.12 of value is returned to the U.S. economy (McKinsey 2003).

Our clients range from low-income entrepreneurs in New Jersey to nonprofits and startups in the Silicon Valley--in other words, businesses with tight budgets. Our services make it possible for them to get work done that would not be feasible otherwise. By offering quality work at low prices, we create jobs that simply would not exist without us, and we offer our partners attractive living wages to do them.

In addition, by offering quality services at competitive prices, Samasource creates opportunities for domestic firms, which lead to lower pricing for end-customers, more sales and eventually more domestic hiring to service those sales.

How does Samasource create work and sustainable livelihoods in poor regions?

To date, Samasource has found work benefiting more than 550 people. Our training programs have helped more than 300 students and aspiring workers learn valuable technical skills, including Facebook Application development. We work with 20 partners, the majority of which are in East Africa in low-income countries with staggering unemployment rates. The average income there is below $75 a month, but working with a Samasource partner raises that to $300 a month or more. In addition to directly generating jobs and income for skilled workers in these regions, our model also indirectly generates work for semi- and un-skilled workers. Each direct job we create leads to 2.5 indirect ones.

Furthermore, we help to reduce "brain drain" from these low-income regions by providing desirable work. We offer our partners training in marketable services that we have seen a demand for in Silicon Valley. The training we provide will serve partner employees well as their careers and skill sets progress beyond Samasource. We do not intend Samasource to be a life-long employment opportunity for each individual, but rather hope to serve as a launch pad for fruitful careers.

In addition, because we are based in Silicon Valley and are connected to that market, we are able to connect the two ends of supply and demand. To date, we have contracted over $250,000 worth of work with both large nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies for our partners. Our method is 100% sustainable -- with each job we find for our partners, we earn a small fee to cover our operational expenses. We appreciate any contribution to help cover these expenses.

How is Samasource different from traditional outsourcing?

Outsourcing refers to the business practice of subcontracting a process to a third-party supplier, often to take advantage of a lower price. The traditional outsourcing industry, valued at $160 billion, is concentrated in the hands of a few, very large multinational outsourcing firms. The majority of the jobs it has created are located in big cities in China, India and the Philippines. This leaves out small, locally-owned businesses and skilled workers in the lowest-income regions, specifically in Africa and rural Asia. Those regions are facing a serious talent surplus; many families there spend more than twice their income on sending their children to school, only to have them face a 70% unemployment rate once they complete their education.

Samasource collaborates with women, youth and refugees and is driven by a social mission to broaden their work opportunities. Unlike traditional outsourcing companies, we are structured as a non-profit organization, ensuring that our commitment to our workers comes first.

Why is Samasource a nonprofit?

First and foremost, we are driven by our social mission: to reduce poverty among women, youth, and refugees in low-income communities around the world by providing dignified, technology-based work. To be successful, our beneficiaries need training, project management, and marketing services that would not be able to afford if they had to pay market rates.

Samasource provides these services for free to our service partners. To ensure that we can continue providing such services, we have structured Samasource as a social business, rather than as a purely grant-funded entity -- we charge a modest service fee to clients, a small percentage of the value of the work done by our service partners, to cover our operational costs.

If we were a for-profit or profit-maximizing business, we might be urged by investors or shareholders to alter our methods in order to generate higher returns. We believe that our first commitment is to our beneficiaries. As a non-profit organization, our legal structure ensures that we maintain that commitment while growing an organization capable of sustaining itself through earned income.

What is remote work? What type of work does Samasource offer?

Remote work refers to tasks that can be completed from any location in the world, as long as a computer and internet connection is available. Examples of remote work include: data entry and digitization, web development, image and site moderation, application testing, video and audio services, project management, research assistance, virtual assistance, and tasks via Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Why can't American workers do those jobs? Why should African and Asian workers want to?

The majority of the jobs that we provide offer wages of below minimum wage in the United States. For instance, data entry jobs are often $5/hour or less. Compared to the U.S. minimum wage of $7.25/hour, these jobs cannot provide wages that most U.S. workers will find compelling. Compared to the less-than-$2.50-per-family-per-day reality that many of our partners in East Africa and rural Asia face, however, the work we connect them to represents a significant boost in their livelihoods. However, Americans can complete some of these higher value tasks as well and Samasource is exploring the possibility of bringing its services to disadvantaged regions of the U.S.

What makes Samasource different from oDesk and Elance?

Companies like oDesk and Elance are marketplaces for remote work that connect clients to freelancers. Samasource differs from these for-profit companies by actively recruiting disadvantaged service partners, providing training to them at no cost, and customizing project management and payment solutions that meet their needs. For example, online marketplaces limit users to certain money transfer methods, such as PayPal or Moneybookers, which do not work in many remote parts of the world but are easy to implement and scale. As a non-profit, Samasource can be more flexible: we use a variety of transfer methods, including Western Union, to ensure that payments reach the places where they are most needed.

How can my organization apply to be a Samasource partner?

Samasource currently works with 20 partners in Africa and Asia. Partners must meet the following criteria:

Be registered businesses or nonprofits located in a low-income region
Meet stringent guidelines for Social Responsibility and sign a Code of Conduct
Complete a detailed application and interview process

We accept applications on a rolling basis. Please contact us to learn more.

From where does Samasource receive its funding?

Samasource currently receives the majority of its funding from foundations and individual donors. We also receive a service fee on work provided to our partners, which helps us cover our project management overhead, sales and technology infrastructure costs.

How can I give work to Samasource?

Please request a quote. You can browse our services here.

How can I donate to Samasource?

Please click here to donate via PayPal.

Does Samasource have 501(c)(3) status?

Yes. Our Tax ID Number is 26-254-7062. We are also a registered member of Guidestar, which is one of the largest databases of IRS-recognized nonprofit organizations.

How can I give in-kind to Samasource?

Please send expressions of interest to donate@samasource.org.
Below is our wish list:

Mac mini (2)
iWork software (2)
Adobe Photoshop (2)
Desktop PC (2)
Skype headset (4)
Low-cost or free printing for marketing collateral and business cards
Low-cost or free advertising

What else can I do to support Samasource?

Give work. If you don't have work to give, please consider spreading the word about what we do by joining our Facebook fan page, by supporting Samasource on Causes, or by following us on Twitter. You may also donate to help fund our startup and expansion costs.

If you are interested in volunteering, please email a CV and cover letter to volunteer@samasource.org.

How can I contact Samasource?

Feel free to reach out to us via mail, email or phone.

455 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
email:info@samasource.org
phone: (800) 521-6717

How can I give feedback to the Samasource team?

In addition to contacting us via the methods mentioned above, you can give us feedback on our service partners at www.rateitall.com.

Where else can I go to learn more about Samasource?

www.samasource.org
blog.samasource.org
www.youtube.com/user/Samasource

You may also follow Samasource on Facebook and Twitter .