Donate to Donar: Help 200 Organizations in Chile

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!