GlobalGiving, the online charity marketplace that we've blogged about before, has launched a new "prediction market" online. They are looking for a "master speculators."

Much like eBay's approach to online commerce, GlobalGiving is changing the way people give. We work with a network of well-run organizations and carefully research their projects - gathering detailed information on the project leaders, as well as the projects' objectives and expected outcomes. Then, we make it simple for you to give to these projects and track the impact of your generosity.

Anyone can browse through the different organizations in their database and help others around the world. By playing in the prediction market, you help determine which projects should graduate to the full GlobalGiving website. There project leaders can connect to thousands of interested donors and potential partners, and can fundraise for their work.

"The Prediction Market" is available for you to participate until August 31.

A prediction market (decision market) is a speculative market designed to make predictions on the outcome of a particular event. It is like a stock market where people buy and sell shares of ‘projects stock’ instead of company stocks.

On August 31, the projects that qualify will be added to the GlobalGiving website database and will be able to start fundraising. After a few months, the 'traders' that speculated accurately will receive awards.

The "Disruptive Innovations in Health and Health Care" competition from Ashoka’s Changemakers - that Julia blogged about in July - is now in its last stage: the voting!

There were about 300 projects that participated in this competition, ranging from microinsurance to direct selling and franchising to telemedicine. Ten finalists have been selected, including "Scojo Microfranchises Deliver Affordable Reading Glasses to the Rural Poor" from the Scojo Foundation, the subject of one of our recently released What Works case studies.

There are other finalists that work in the BOP such as Point Care, which submitted the project "Better AIDS treatment for patients living in resource poor regions." There's also the Stanford University School of Design/ School of Medicine entry of "Respira!: An Extremely Affordable Device for Better Asthma Care." All the projects are worth reading because they offer interesting solutions to many healthcare problems.

The Ashoka judges have done their part, and now it's everyone’s turn to vote and decide which project gets the competition money. There will be three winners, and each will receive a $5000 grant. NextBillion encourages our readers to vote; the voting ends August 29!