Round It Forward
Will Warner
Round It Forward is an organization, website and online browser application that makes donating the rounded up total of any online transaction easy to complete. Micro-donations can have a tremendous impact on the people and communities that benefi t from the monies raised by charitable organizations around the world by broadening the contributor base and by making the results of these donations more visible. The defi ning element of this application is the data visualization feature that tracks project success rates derived from the donation as well as the patterns of contributions the user has made. The project differentiates itself from other charity organizations by it’s transparency, trustworthiness, and the user’s ability to choose the charities they want to donate to and what percentage of their money goes to those charities. This is unprecedented among donation facilitators. The transparency and trustworthiness are achieved through weekly project updates from the charities the user is donating to. In addition, visualizations describing (and showing) the progress being made, and the results of their donations are easily viewable by the user. Grand totals and individual totals of money donated, charity projects completed and people helped, will inform the users and increase transparency and their sense of making a difference. Through an evaluation process and system, organizations will only be selected for user donations if they meet the required standards. This project has the potential to change the culture of philanthropy. My fi nal goal is to make donating not just incredibly easy, but almost invisible; second nature and part of people’s every day life.