Kickstarter’s Co-Founder Brings Crowdfunding Ethos to Non-Profits

Most of us want to support the organizations that fight the great injustices in the world. However, with more than 1,500,000 charities in the U.S. alone, it’s unlikely that we can spare the time to research them and decide which are worthy of our contributions, causing many wonderful and high-impact nonprofits to fall through the cracks of our attention. 

Perry Chen, who you may know as one of the founders of Kickstarter, is proposing a new way for people to donate to good causes. His new service, Dollar A Day, enables its subscribers to support a different non-profit organization every day — automatically. Subscribers are charged $30 each month (all tax-deductible) and the money is distributed evenly to a portfolio of non-profits registered in the U.S. The twist is that every day a different organization receives your donation and once you subscribe you’re funding them all. This means that one day, your dollar may go toward Diabetes research, and the next towards crisis intervention for LGBTQ youth. It also means that it may go to both small organizations and big ones that already have a significant amount of funding. 

Basically, Dollar A Day acts as a curator of nonprofits whose taste and judgement you choose to trust. It pre-selects and pre-checks all the featured organizations and promises that they are “innovative, high-impact, and with a responsible track record.” A calendar of the supported nonprofits can be found on its website, spanning six main areas: Education, Health, Economic Development, Arts & Culture, Environment, and Human Rights. 

Some of the organizations that will be funded in coming weeks include Code.org, whose mission is to encourage young people to take up computer science; Oceana, an organization committed to restoring ocean’s life through policy; and Committee to Project Journalists, whose mission is to secure greater press freedom around the world.

Currently, the platform has 892 donating subscribers. This means that every day $892 is being donated to the featured organization. If you don’t feel like donating, but want to learn more about Dollar A Day’s picks, you can subscribe to their mailing list and receive information every day about a new organization and the problem it’s trying to solve.

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