The Making of a Non-Profit Organization

The $10 Initiative. What does it mean?

Our strat planner from McCann Erickson forced upon us this question as we tried to develop a plan for our Initiative.

Conventional wisdom states that people ought to enrich themselves, amass wealth and power, then become philanthropists. The Oprahs, Bill Gateses, Warren Buffets of the world have proven this old formula tried tested and true.

Then you have this 21 year old junior in some American university, hanging out in his dorm room, checking out what his friends have been up to in Facebook, planning out his Friday night, or wondering what summer job to take. In his world, issues are hounding everyone else. The Iraq war. Threats to the environment. Poverty. The presidential election. The need for change. He finds these issues unsettling, but he knows that he cannot do much to make a real impact in a way that the powerful world philanthropists have.

But to us, at 21, he can be a true philanthropist.

This is our story too—we have not arrived at the pinnacle of our careers, or come close to building our own empires. At a unique time in our lives with not much achieved or proven to the world, what we have is a good education, and we want to make a concrete difference by using technology, which is becoming the legacy of our generation.

I look forward to discovering with all of you the faces, the projects, the teachers, the students, the real meaning of the $10 Initiative.

As we stand on the shoulders of giants...

We spoke to the 3 CEO's and here are our takeaways:

Charles Best of Donorschoose.org said, " Go for it!"
Matt Flannery of Kiva.org said, "Never listen to naysayers."
Dennis Whittle of GlobalGiving.com said, "Even if you fail, at least you tried. Keep the enthusiasm."

Can we make the tendollarinitiative.org worth something someday? Can we actually build this thing without any budget, with all volunteers for staff, with zero knowledge of running a non-profit? Can we turn this dream into something real? I write this as I am laying out the tasks for the branding team. Perhaps... let's just do it.

Testing

Testing... we can delete this later.