This past weekend I had the privilege of participating (and sponsoring, via FoxyCart) in the National Day of Civic Hacking. Nashville joined 95 cities hosting events all over the country. Saturday and Sunday, we bunkered down at the Emma office to form #Hack4Nash (more info at http://hack4changenash.org/).
Having worked in non-profit ministry for 6 years (raising my own financial suppor to do so), I know how critical money is to the process of serving others. My idea for the weekend was to build a basic content site with detailed screenshots and instructions for non-technical, no-budget nonprofits to get online quickly and start receiving donations. At FoxyCart, we often hear from nonprofits who need to get online but don't have any resources or expertise to do so. No matter how technical something is, a detailed walk-through with screenshots can be followed by just about anyone.
163 screenshots later, DonationGandhi.com was born.
- Get a domain name and hosting
- Install Wordpress
- Customize Wordpress
- Install an ecommerce plugin
- Build a donation page
- Configure a shopping cart system
- Configure a payment gateway
- Set up a Twitter account
- Set up a Facebook page
You might be asking why I didn't do something more complicated involving PHP, a Hypermedia API or Bitcoin algorithm. The answer is, I wanted to learn Wordpress and FoxyShop. Both are a big part of my business, and I had never personally installed them. Also, it's often the simplest solutions that make the greatest impact.
This site could be really useful to a lot of people... but only if they know about it. Will you help spread the word?
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