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DonorsChoose http://www.donorschoose.org is a variation of micro-lending: micro-giving in which donations (not loans) are offered from individuals to very specific school projects that need funding. Their tagline is “An online charity connecting you to classrooms in need.”
The success of this venture is in the individual-to-community nature of the giving, and the ability for donors to search on their own interests or locations or projects that they would like to fund (in whole or in part). There is an active feedback communication about the projects to the donors. It is the personal residing in the virtual, and a compelling use of the technology.
In March of 2008, Fortune ran an article, “The only nonprofit that matters” http://tinyurl.com/369pd7 about Kiva and Donorschoose. See last week’s posting about Kiva here http://tinyurl.com/yktcueq .
From the Fortune article:
“DonorsChoose.org is an education-oriented site founded by former Bronx high school teacher Charles Best. DonorsChoose.org differs from Kiva in that it’s U.S.-only, and users make donations rather than loans. But as with Kiva, DonorsChoose.org connects donors and recipients over the web. It also aims to tackle a big problem - underfunded public schools - by breaking it into small chunks, letting donors effect change in very specific ways.”
The founder, Charles Best, is the USA Network 2009 Character Approved Winner in Giving. http://tinyurl.com/yh2w5wb
“USA Network announced today the winners of the first-ever Character Approved Awards, a new program created to honor individuals from a cross-section of creative disciplines who are positively influencing American culture.”
And Donorschoose.org won Business Week’s Best of the Web in 2005
http://www.donorschoose.org/news/news_businessweek_20050926.pdf
“The organization recently went live in all 50 states, thanks to a $14 million donation that included money from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Yahoo co-founder David Filo. Super-VC Vinod Khosla also contributed and helped structure the funding to be less restrictive than a typical grant. He ranks DonorsChoose.org alongside the most innovative tech companies.”
We have entered into the time when the applications of the Web offer the possibility of a true change in the behaviors and empowerment of the individual.
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