How a Nonprofit's Fundraising Struggle Led Us to Build The Dollar Effect

The idea for The Dollar Effect came from our CTO, Albert Padin.

"All I was thinking about was, well, people want to help. People generally want to help but sometimes it's complicated to give because one, you think of other expenses so you can't give much." - Albert Padin

Albert had a few colleagues working for nonprofit organizations, and he saw how much time and effort they had to put into raising funds. They raised money in a one-time-big-time way, so they would organize a campaign, raise funds, run their operations on those funds for a while, and do it all again when the money was almost gone. That cycle kept pulling them away from the work that fulfils their mission.

So Albert came up with the idea of something that lets people give continuously. The amount doesn't have to be big. It has to be recurring, so the nonprofit gets a stable, predictable cash flow.

"The idea came out like, what if we make this so that the amount is actually small enough that it's the last thing you would consider cutting off? So you would have a smaller amount but the drive was to get many people to do it so a lot of people are doing good to make a bigger impact."

Team members here at Symph volunteered to build it. The result is www.thedollareffect.com, a web app where people subscribe to a nonprofit of their choice and set up their account to donate $1 to it automatically every month.

Nicole Padin (Project Manager), John Rey Evangelista (Developer) and Rose Tan (Designer) led The Dollar Effect project, with support from many others on our team.

When we asked Rose why she wanted to work on The Dollar Effect, she said:

"I was so on-board with the idea. I and my family also supported an organization that helped the less fortunate kids who lived in the slums. They are all reliant on donors and I could feel the struggle in their part to sustain funds for their cause. It (The Dollar Effect) was a good idea."

As the designer, Rose started by studying other donation sites and comparing their design, features and other components, and then she came up with our own design for The Dollar Effect.

Once the designs were final, we made a release plan, and John Rey started development with other developers, including Jhong Paigan, one of our full stack developers.

Nicole managed the project, which ran for about one month, and we launched the web app to the public last April.

https://youtu.be/5taTcjZCkV8

Albert has signed up too:

"I've done it (subscribed to The Dollar Effect), a lot of people in the (Symph) office have done it, and I seriously have forgotten about it (that he has been giving monthly donations). It's so small that you forget about it but if a lot of people actually do it, it could really make a great impact. That's what we call 'The Dollar Effect.'"

If you want to be part of this cause, as a donor or as a nonprofit, you can sign up on The Dollar Effect.