Economic Growth Chile Project #8563

Donate to Donar: Help 200 Organizations in Chile

by Fundacion Ciudadano Inteligente (Smart Citizen Foundation)

Project Report | Apr 16, 2012
Donar.cl is changing for the better!

By Katherina Malis | Project Coordinator

Dear Donors and Supporters!

Our project, Donar, is going through some big and positive changes! To be totally transparent with you, our donors, we wanted to communicate these changes. As we mentioned in our previous report, we were considering associating ourselves to another organization for multiple reasons. As you know, Donar is a project of the Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente (Smart Citizen Foundation). This past month the Foundation has gone through some internal changes, including a revision of its central mission. In this evaluation, the Foundation found that Donar no longer fit within the limits. Thus, Donar was temporarily without a home. The search for the perfect home began.

As of a few days ago, we have decided to partner with “Ayudar”, a similar initiative to Donar. Let us tell you more about the initiative and why they were our perfect match!

Ayudar.cl | “What destiny doesn’t accomplish, we do!”

Where your goodwill finds a person in need

“Ayudar”, or “Help” in English, is an online platform that matches an individual looking to ways to help with geo-referenced opportunities, with organizations that work vulnerable, impoverished, and socially excluded persons across Chile. Currently, the web platform has 101 organizations registered and more than 590 ways to “ayudar”, to help. The main objective of “Ayudar” is to inform those individuals looking for ways to contribute to society on how and where to do so. In that sense, “Donar” shares the same goal.

“Ayudar” is an initiative that originated within the context of the “Community of Pro-Solidarity Organizations” (Comunidad Organizaciones Solidarias) that brings together 101 organizations working with over 500 thousand people. The website will be officially launched on the 15th of May, supported by a strong publicity campaign through various social networks. Please help get the word out and follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Why did “Donar” decide to merge with “Ayudar”?

Our team at Donar believes in collaboration as a fundamental principle of solidarity. To us, it makes no sense to "reinvent the wheel”. Ayudar has advanced a great deal in building a network of organizations, mainly due to its five years working alongside the organizations belonging to the “Community of Pro-Solidarity Organizations”.

Both projects - Donar and Ayudar - overlap in their principal objectives. Both seek to promote transparency and public participation, through the use of technology. Both connect donors with actual needs so they can create a positive change in their society. Both aim to decentralize a variety of social causes. Both promote the diversification of information and transparency. Both seek to generate informed donations, reducing the asymmetries in access to information as a donor.

With this partnership, the Donar group will work to improve Ayudar’s platform. Using our expertise of web development and graphic design, we will work together to add features to the Ayudar site. Add that with the already established, extensive network of third sector organizations which Ayudar already has, and the platform has the potential to be a great success, helping hundreds of organizations and persons in need!

For this reason, Donar will not continue to participate in the Global Giving platform as “Donar” but as Ayudar. We expect all our donors and friends who have supported us in this beautiful project, continue to help us now with this new version. The goal is the same; the only change is the name. Our team at Donar will support Ayudar in all of its endeavors and will play a crucial role in the development of the initiative.

Of course, we would like to end as we always do; by thanking you, our donors. We would like to thank you for you trust in our cause. Finally, we’d like to reiterate that although Donar is experiencing changes, we will continue to work with Ayudar to fulfill all our goals, to make a difference in Chile. We will not let you down and will keep working to make this dream a reality.

If you are dissatisfied with your donation to this project and would like to reallocate your donation to another GlobalGiving project, please contact Alexis Nadin atanadin@globalgiving.org by Friday, April 27.

Thank you very much!

Muchisimas gracias!

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Jan 16, 2012
Greetings and Happy 2012 from Donar

By Katherina Malis | Project Director

Greetings and Happy 2012 from the Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente!

We are very confident that this year will be a great year, full of new projects and challenges. From this optimistic point of view, we have started the new year by reevaluating Donar.

Since we’ve last written, our star project – Donar – has not quite stayed on the path we had set out for it. After almost four months of working diligently, we have come across a few bumps in the long and winding road. Why, you ask? Well, for various reasons. First and foremost, we’ve had trouble developing a strategy to stay auto-sustainable. We realized that to develop a success platform, one that will make and maintain a positive impact on organizations in Chile, we need an economically feasible plan. We were adamant about not taking away a single penny from our organizations, but on the other hand we had to assume various costs – maintenance of the website, personnel, volunteers, and equipment among others.

We want you – our wonderful donors – to understand our situation. Let’s start with the fact that in Chile (like most of South America), we do not have an online system of donations that doesn’t charge us per transaction. Moreover, we do not have legislation at any level that demands a level of transparency and accountability of the actions and decisions of organizations. After much debate, we were still struggling with developing a plan that would serve as enough incentive for the organizations to participate in the Donar platform.

We did not want to fully launch the website to late have to take it down due to lack of resources – human or financial. What has always characterized our team at Donar is our passion and determination. The citizens of Chile, not to mention our donors, have placed your trust in us and we will not disappoint. We will continue to fight for the opening of data, so the public can hold organizations accountable and make the best, most informed decisions.

So, what are we going to do? After several team meetings, we developed a plan. Thus, we began to have meetings with various organizations that both have similarities to Donar as well as an important difference, a functional and successful website. We have met with four nonprofits that promote solidarity, have the capacity to accept online donations of various kinds – financial, gifts-in-kind, and volunteer time. These projects impact all areas of daily life. They stock schools full of supplies, create mentoring programs for foster children, collect funds for workshops to empower women, among many other valuable projects.

Our plan is to create a strategic partnership with one of these great organizations, after closely analyzing the options. Together, we will help them better their online platform, with the great amount of experience our foundation has from creating and maintaining over ten online applications in less than two years. Together, we will work to diminish the inequality of donations in Chile.

Together we can grow Donar into its full potential. We believe that through this experience, we have learned quite a bit. We now feel that we have a sound idea, a mature and reachable idea. Next time we update you, we hope to be able to give you some great news. As of now, we’d just like you to thank you for you trust and assure you that your investment in us will pay off in the near future.

We wish you a happy and successful 2012, full of learning experiences, from our Donar family to yours!

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Oct 18, 2011
Donar made it onto Global Giving! Now what?

By Anca Matioc | Project Coordinator

First and foremost, we would like to thank you – one of the 114 people - for having shown us you support. With your help, we have been fortunate enough to raise a total of $ 4,756 dollars in donations for Donar. During and after our participation in the Open Challenge, we received very positive feedback from donors like you. We hope that this great energy grows with Donar!

Still, you may be asking yourself, the Open Challenge is over... now what?

Since finishing the Open Challenge, we have been working hard on Donar. The first thing we did was create a strategic plan with our energetic team. During this process, we focused on creating a sustainable strategy, seeing how we can make the donation platform dynamic and self-sufficient over time. We are sure that the plan we created fits perfectly with our project. We’re confident it will ensure us success in the long run and will give us enough flexibility to roll with the punches in the short run.

In addition, we have been actively looking for partners that we believe can help us through their experiences and expertise. These strategic partners include GlobalGiving (that’s right, GlobalGiving), HelpArgentina, and Transparentemos, among others. GlobalGiving will be showing us the donation-ropes, helping us adapt their platform to the Chilean reality. HelpArgentina has also us lent a helping hand by allowing us to use their transparency model. Finally, a Chilean non-profit, Transparentemos, is working with us to create training materials to support the Donar community of organizations.

We have talked with several organizations that want to integrate the platform to see when we can begin to build and to receive your information. We’re very excited to say that after contacting several Chilean organizations, we have over 30 organizations who want to participate. They are all excited about the initiative and look forward to working with us. I’ll write you more about these awesome organizations very soon!

Thank you for your continued support as your support is helping influence a positive change among Chile’s non-profit organizations!

Links:

Check out the Donar Beta version!

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