Volunteering for education + advocacy
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.