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Ideas for "eBay" for Charities?
www.enrichanother.com was created by computer science students under their professor at Brown University, under the direction of non-tekki but well-meaning private citizens (me and my husband). It is essentially an "eBay" for charities, where registered nonprofits post a need for an item or initiative and the dollar amount required, and donors can use a variety of filters (type of charity, distance from home city, etc) to choose specific projects to donate to. (More by visiting www.enrichanother.com, or reading a Brown University article: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/InsideBrown/2005/022005d.html All efforts and investments in creating the site to date were donated...reflecting one of our core values...that "everyone has a gift to give".The premise of the site is to bring viral efficiencies to charitable giving, empowering donors while encouraging effective efforts.The site lets a donor cross-check a charity's mission, record of success, percent of donation spent on overhead, and efficiency via www.guidestar.org (a database of 1.7 million bonafide U.S. non-profits). It also has a donor feedback mechanism, as with eBay, so that over time, charities can get an on-line "reputation". (A McKinsey Company study, chaired by former Sen. Bill Bradley and published in 2003 in the Harvard Business Review finds there's at least $100 billion of waste each year in the way charities are now administered.)Since developing the site, I've become involved in other projects and am assessing whether the site remains viable. If so, I'd need a partner or new "home" for it. The professor who wrote most most of the code acknowledges the site might need to be rebuilt on a more accessible platform. He is graciously willing to continue helping. So...is the site viable? I've been advised it could pair well with a social networking site. Perhaps monetizing it via selling membership to charities, ad space etc, is an option.Thoughts, anyone? Thank you!Pat Mastors