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Benj and Jessica launched a nonprofit. Follow our journey as we built a 501(c)(3) and a web site, and now usher in an endless stream of worthy charity nominees and monthly grant winners!

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Smile! We’re on smile.amazon.com!

I said smile, dangit!

Thanks to a heads up from the amazing Kim Andrews, I'm now aware of Charitocracy's presence on smile.amazon.com. I'll let Amazon explain:

AmazonSmile is a simple and automatic way for you to support your favorite charitable organization every time you shop, at no cost to you. When you shop at smile.amazon.com, you’ll find the exact same low prices, vast selection and convenient shopping experience as Amazon.com, with the added bonus that Amazon will donate a portion of the purchase price to your favorite charitable organization.

So if you shop at Amazon, you can reach it through the smile front door, choose Charitocracy as your charitable cause to support, and then buy what you would normally buy. Or better yet, buy one of EVERYTHING!

Buy all the things for Charitocracy

September 2016 winner The NEA Foundation

Charitocracy's 1st check to September winner The NEA Foundation for $500

We voted in our first winner this weekend!

Congratulations to winner The NEA Foundation, and to donor sherylwthorp for nominating it! You can find their web site here. Check out this short film about them, and feel good about your part in our collective $500 grant!

Nominations for October close on Friday night. Go ahead and familiarize yourself with the 21 nominated causes (15 from last month, 6 so far this month) and if one doesn't catch your imagination, consider nominating one yourself!

Finally, feel free to mention Charitocracy to your friends! Rumor has it there's a pitch video coming soon... all part of our cutting edge social media strategy here at Charitocracy. (Step #1 was "get rid of that rubbish /dashboard/ back door," and we totally nailed that one!)

I may be gone from your URL, but Charitocracy's dashboard still has a time and a place: inside

Charitocracy Finally Explained

Charitocracy finally explained. How do you like them apples?

We have $230 in September's pot, and on Friday night at midnight we'll name our first recipient cause! And if after 9 months -- the gestation period for a web charity -- and 33 blog posts you don't fully grasp Charitocracy yet, I don't blame you! I've only just taken the time to really explain it here. (Existing donors need to log out first to see it, since it's geared toward new recruits.)

To be honest, 6 months ago when I took a guess at how many donors we'd attract in our first month, I guessed higher. I figured we might get 100 donors, since there were plenty more than that who liked our Facebook page. Currently there are 220 likes, but only 47 donors. Some of that discrepancy is due to households creating one account whereas multiple family members like Charitocracy. But I'm hopeful there are still a lot of friends and family members out there who simply need our persistent yammering here before they'll climb aboard. At $13/year and 2 minutes to enter your name and credit card info, it's not a steep climb!

At the same time, I totally underestimated the generosity of our donors. I imagined we'd average maybe $2/month from each donor, but instead we're seeing closer to $5/month! This is great, since it tells me our monthly pot will be somewhere in the vicinity of $500 once we cross that 100 donor mark. If you're reading this, you've probably already signed up, but if not, let me know what it's going to take. I will suffer a bucket of ice water. I will eat a lime. I will sing karaoke (or not sing karaoke if you prefer). Tell me what I can do that I'm not already doing to earn your $13! Operators are standing by.

Yes, Benj would do that!