What one sentence best describes your idea?

My idea is a non-profit, meta-charity that uses technology to turn used books, CDs, DVD into charitable cash donations for any charity.

Describe your idea in more depth.

The DonationEngine.org will be a non profit organization that collects used items from donors and sells them online using an efficient, automated process.

• Collection is through a partnership with a store or supermarket, through office buildings and charitable organizations.
• The donor logs on to DonationEngine.org, chooses a charity and prints a barcode that she places in a bag with the items to donate.
• At the central warehouse, the items are linked to the donor profile, labeled with a barcode, photographed and automatically placed on auction websites.
• The donor tracks his items, the resulting cash contributions and their impact for his charity.
• The buyer improves their karma by enabling the donation and learns about the DonationEngine.org.

What’s new ?

• A non-profit, meta-charity uses efficient technology to allow charities to outsource fundraising.
• The donor uses any convenient drop off location yet chooses his personal cause.
• Efficiency in the sales process is implemented by online auctions, selling at the highest possible price with predictable time in the warehouse. A modern logistic and sales automation process keeps expense per item low.
• Donors and buyers can track how much they donated and where the money went.
• The online markets are not only used to efficiently sell books but also to select the most worthy cause that donors select and buyers support.
• The tracking process enables tax deduction for non-cash donation in many countries where the tax deduction value of used items may not be estimated.
• Project 10 to the 100 publicity provides initial publicity to start the donation process.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

One benefit is the support of the reuse of products saving natural resources that would otherwise be spent on manufacturing and packaging.
But the main concept is that the DonationEngine helps any problem that has supporters. Everyone has a personal reason to help. The biggest problem is determined by each user of the DonationEngine and you can help solve the problem that YOU consider most urgent.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

Anyone who has excess books, CDs or DVDs and anyone who has a cause they want to support can donate. The benefit goes to people who need it most, decided by users of the DonationEngine, for each donation.
People in the developed world benefit from the system, being able to contribute in an efficient and effective way, people in the developing countries are amongst the donation recipients.
Environmental resources are saved as fewer items are produced and more used items are in circulation.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

When 250,000 items are sold and $2 million are donated to at least 50 qualified charities that help a variety of causes in all continents.
It requires an efficient system to collect and track goods, to communicate with registered donors and buyers, and to store and ship items.
The DonationEngine will start with items that are easy to store, transport and sell: books, CD’s and DVDs.

• The 10^100 publicity will make possible donors aware and it will also get charities and individuals or even companies with retail outlets to offer donation drop offs.
• An warehouse with a barcode system, a device to catalogue items, and software to generate, maintain and close online sales is required.
• An online user communication process with functional user interface and charity information needs to be established
• Operations including salary, rent, shipping, etc. need to be maintained.

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

If the DonationEngine has generated at least $500 million in donations to more than 150 qualified charitable organizations and it has engaged at least 10 million donors and helped more than 10 million recipients world wide then the DonationEngine is a success and its potential exceeds an annual $1 billion of worldwide donations.

At that point, word of mouth has spread the information on the availability of this service making most people aware of it. The cost to process a single item by the donation engine will be reduced to a fraction of its value, allowing the majority of the sales proceeds to be donated. Users will routinely buy and sell second hand items, using the donation engine as a charitable, convenient and affordable way to buy and sell a variety of products.