I have a couple of ideas for some easy humanitarianism, but I’m not sure how to go about implementing them. Maybe you the readers can help.
Idea #1 Retail Card Swipe Message
Having worked in the retail industry, I’ve seen that people do in fact want to do good. They just don’t have the easy and reliable access to do so, and when people have to do more work to do good you will see an exponential decrease in the amount actually done. How many of you would recycle if a recycle truck came by the way the garbage truck does? I know it would make things easier for me.
Thses days when you buy something from Best Buy or Walmart, most of us use a card, debit or credit. We’ve all used the little touch screen to direct the machine to charge funds via a pin number or signature etc. I’ve realized that the easiest way to get people to do good work is to make it easy for them. With this in mind, if users were asked before they total their transaction if they would like to “Donate 1 dollar to the [insert cause here] fund?” I’m willing to bet that many of them would click yes.
The question is, how does one approach retailers with an idea like this? How do you market this to them? Why would they want to be involved in this? Also which causes would you choose? Is there a best fit cause for different industries?
Idea #2 The Internet Humanitarian
I want to develop a portal site to different humanitarian causes. Something with a real web 2.0 feel, clean design, friendly interface. Then I want to market the hell out of it. Have a facebook app, have a blog activist post about it like Blog Action Day (get hundreds of bloggers to write about it all in 1 day), Digg It, Stumble It, Delicious It, advertise it in many different ad agencies etc.
I’m thinking this site should become the internet authority of good causes to donate to, to make it easy for people to do so. You should be able to donate via paypal or other escrow services directly to the cause fund (and not into my paypal account or anyone elses). If we could market this the way productRED is marketed, I think it could be a real success. Just looking for some great ideas to help push this idea along.
also, how does one go about registering as a non-profit… i don’t know anything about the legal aspect of doing this?
Here is your chance to get involved. I will take on anyone who wants to help with either of these projects or has any idea that can move these along. Or if you have any other great humanitarian ideas, I’m all ears.
