# Non-Profit Idea: Neverending Charity

By Randall Degges · October 15, 2010 · https://rdegges.com/2010/non-profit-idea-neverending-charity/

> A non-profit idea: pool donations in high-yield savings accounts, then give the monthly interest to a charity the donors vote on, forever.

![Waterfall Sketch][]


I often have business / charity ideas that I would eventually like to act on.
I (stupidly) never kept a record of them anywhere, until today.

I ordered a new [Moleskine notebook][] from Amazon, and decided to use it as an
idea notebook.  So from now on, whenever I get a business / charity idea, I'll
write it down in there, so that I can eventually I can either develop them
myself, or cross them off my list as someone-else-already-implemented.

My first idea (I've had this floating around in the back of my head for quite
some time now) is called...


## Neverending Charity

Neverending Charity is a non-profit organization that accepts monetary
donations, and places them into high-yield savings accounts.

The idea is that by pooling money from many people who donate, and storing that
money in high-yield savings accounts (to gain a certain percentage as interest
each month), the charity will never run out of money to donate to its cause.

At the end of each month, Neverending Charity will take the interest that has
accumulated on all donated monies, and donate it to a specific cause.  The more
money that people donate to Neverending Charity, the more money that it will be
able to give away at the end of each month.

Since Neverending Charity will be (for the most part) completely automated,
there will be little to no operational cost, and 100% (or close to it) of
donated funds can be given away.  It will be self-sustaining (never have to
worry about recessions, or anything like that), and will be able to provide an
eternity of awesomeness without worry.


## The Problem With Current Charities

I really love charities.  Any group that can really change the world is a good
thing.

The problem with most charities that exist now, however, is overhead.  The cost
of running charities can be high, depending on the type of organization.
Paying for physical stores / collection centers like the Salvation Army or
Goodwill can really rack up expenses.  Not to mention the fact that they have
to pay tons of employees to handle goods and organize locations.

The beauty of Neverending Charity is that it is simple enough to require very
little operational cost.  Most of the process can be fully automated.  And what
can't be automated can be done (for the most part) online.  Creating Facebook
fan pages, twitter accounts, and performing SEO optimization on the website can
all be done with very little effort and cost.


## The Math

Obviously, the downside to Neverending Charity is that you aren't generating
enormous donations every month (at least, not initially).  So let's do some
math below to see how much donation money Neverending Charity would need to
reach certain markers.

For all examples below, we'll just assume that the interest rate on our
high-yield savings account is 2%.  This is an unrealistically low number given
the amount of money that we'll be collecting interest on, but we'll use it for
conservative purposes.


**Money in Bank -> Monthly Donations**

```
$10,000         -> $16.67

$100,000        -> $166.67

$1,000,000      -> $1,666.67

$10,000,000     -> $16,666.67

$1,000,000,000  -> $1,666,666.67
```

The numbers required to make a big impact are large, but don't forget-once
people donate, their donation will live on forever and continuously increase
the monthly donation account.

Since Neverending Charity will last forever, the cumulative effort of all
contributers will make a large difference when combined.


## Making it Interesting

Neverending Charity really appeals to me (as a programmer), because it can be
automated to such an enormous extent.  Given enough donations and popularity,
it could very well generate thousands of dollars a month to give to good
causes.

But, let's make things even more interesting.

What if instead of giving money to a single cause every month, Neverending
Charity allowed donors to vote on which organization should receive all
proceeds for the given month?

By allowing donors to vote (whichever group / organization gets the most votes
at the end of the month gets the interest for that month) for which
organization they think should get help each month, Neverending Charity will be
able to reach a larger audience of contributers, and collectively do more good
in the world.

Democratizing the charity process is something I haven't seen done before, and
could be an extremely popular premise.


## Wrap Up

So, in a nutshell, Neverending Charity will be a non-profit group that
leverages the power of the internet, large amounts of people, and banks to make
the world a better place, one month at a time-forever.


[Waterfall Sketch]: waterfall-sketch.png "Waterfall Sketch"
  [Moleskine notebook]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8883701127/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=8883701127&linkCode=as2&tag=rdegges-20 "Moleskine Notebook"