Little bits of good
Posted by subbuthepeaceful
A few weeks ago, a second grade teacher at our elementary school who taught both my son and daughter, talked to me about an idea. She was volunteering for a non-profit in the area and in course of her work had come across the inspirational teaching from Bishop Desmond Tutu that little bits of good can have a profound impact in our communities.
She had an idea based on this, which was to give a kid a wristband called a "Good Band". The kid could do any good deed, however simple and small and the band would serve as a reminder of this. When the kid performed the good deed, he/she could pass on the band to someone else with the same instructions - "Wear the band, do a good deed, pass it on". She wanted to know if it would be possible to build a simple web site that would allow for the kid (or the parent) to easily share or log the good deed so that you'd be part of a growing community of good deeds.
I'm proud to present Goodbands - a simple, easy to use web site, built in some spare time over the past few weeks that realizes this idea. Nothing fancy, simple visuals, no money/advertising/registration involved, just the basic application of some technology to help spread the idea. I realize again that what comes easily to the software engineers among us is sometime completely alien to a non-technical person. Things like spam prevention or profanity filters, for example.
Many thanks to Mary Beth Miller for helping me work with her to realize the concept, and best wishes to spreading little bits of good all around.
Volunteering for education + advocacy
Posted by subbuthepeaceful
I recently had a request to help a non-profit figure out how to get some data collection and online payment processing done. Its not that I was looking for more volunteer work, I seem to have plenty of that without needing to build a new website, but this one was a very satisfying experience.
It turns out that the non-profit that was started by a group of parents and volunteers eager to bring more insight into the state of public education not only in California but across the country. A number of sponsors were working with the group and some excellent site design services had been donated for a good cause to present a collection of content, resources and an online presence for the non-profit. The organization however was almost being held hostage by a 3rd party service that had started to implement their online volunteer database and credit card payment processing. I was given to understand that the organization already had a relationship with PayPal which is typically 2.2-2.9% per transaction for a simple Website Payments Standard account for online credit card processing, but this 3rd party was going to charge them an additional 5% to handle their online donations.
Its an interesting premise and clearly the foundation of a robust business model as far as providing a hosted form/database and online payment processing, but its also tough to justify 5% per transaction as an additional expense for a non-profit. I'm proud to have played a small role in the launch of Educacy, http://www.educacy.org - which is now supported by a simple volunteer collection database and online payment services via PayPal.
It would seem that sometimes what we who are familiar with code and technology and HTML posts and form behavior and iframes can do is educate and spread awareness of how to build something online. Thank you Martha for the introduction, Thuy for some excellent design support and Steffanee for the opportunity to help with Educacy.