While my “day job” is to fill the role of the Chief Information Officer at Radiology Protocols in Iowa City, I’m also the President of Beat Cancer Today which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that raises money for childhood cancer awareness, research, and support programs. We split the money that we raise among three different organizations: The University of Iowa Dance Marathon in Iowa City, Children’s Cancer Connection in Des Moines, and the Children’s Oncology Group Foundation (COG) which is a national research organization for childhood cancers.

Beat Cancer Today is completely run by volunteers and we are super cost conscious. Funds are raised by selling BEAT CANCER shirts, hoodies and bracelets off of our website. We also have one event every February called our Gold Gala which raises funds via silent auction. Beyond this, we haven’t had a great way to hold online fundraisers that individuals could champion for us. There are solutions out there that allow you to use their fundraising platform for your organization, but the big problem with these sites is that they take the first 5% of what you raise, plus 3% for credit card processing. That’s a lot of money that isn’t getting to the charity!

Thanks to my connections with folks in the Central Iowa tech and startup communities, I heard about an inaugural event in Des Moines, IA called dsmHack. The idea of dsmHack was to pair up some of the amazing tech talent we have in Des Moines with nonprofits needing tech help in a weekend “hackathon” styled format. I filled out an application for Beat Cancer Today and we were honored to be selected as one of the beneficiaries of the event! My lofty goal for dsmHacks was to have someone build a fundraising platform where people could create/join teams and share their fundraising pages on social media. It was a really aggressive project to complete in only 48 hours, but the team of 8 that signed up to tackle it for us did an amazing job and had a live, working site by the time the final pitches were given. In fact, by the end of the closing party, the example fundraiser they posted had raised $162 within an hour of being live! There are several enhancements and bug fixes that the team is still working on (even though the dsmHacks event is over, the guys wanted to see it all the way through, which is awesome), but the tool will soon be found at http://give.beatcancertoday.org

To give you an idea on the kind of impact this is going to make, let’s say an individual sets up a fundraising page and meets their goal of $2,500 by having 100 people donate $25 each. Using a tool like fundly.com, our nonprofit would get a check for $2,300. With our new tool built by the team at dsmHacks, our nonprofit would get a check for $2,475 (assuming all the donors used Dwolla, which only charges $.25 per transaction). If everyone donated with PayPal using our tool (which is also an option), we would get a check for $2,397.50. So that means $97.50-$175 MORE dollars goes to our organization. As a practical example, that’s approximately 5-8 more meal vouchers that Dance Marathon could provide to families in the Children’s Hospital due to the decrease in fees!

I’ve been to Startup Weekends and similar events before, but this event had a completely different vibe, despite having a similar format. That was most apparent during the final demos. Instead of teams pitching their demos to try to win a grand prize, the teams were showing off what they were able to accomplish for the 9 nonprofits that were benefitting from their hard work. It felt like there were 9 winners rather than just 1 and I think the popping champagne bottles at the end really drove that home. The venue (StartupCity in downtown Des Moines) was perfect, the sponsored meals and snacks were awesome, and the organizers really did a fantastic job with the event. I couldn’t believe how well attended it was (more than 80 participants signed up, most of them developers) and everyone seemed to really bond over donating their time for a great cause. Silicon Prairie News did a great write up on the event if you want to read more about it.

I have been smiling each day as I continue to see comments and activity on GitHub where the guys are still addressing enhancements and making improvements to the tool. They really want it to be a robust and useful platform for our organization. The team really sees how much value they are creating for our organization and I believe that they are genuinely excited to be playing such a huge role in helping our organization and cause. MAJOR thanks to Jared, Jason, Nick, David, Sai, Sunil, Patrick, and Joe!

We are so thankful to have been included in the inaugural dsmHacks event. The organizers really did a fantastic job. It was wildly successful as far as we are concerned and we know that this will absolutely result in more funding and awareness for childhood cancer!

Aaron Horn is the Chief Information Officer at Radiology Protocols and is the President of BeatCancerToday.org, a nonprofit that raises funds for childhood cancer research and patient/family support programs. His journey while his son Eli battled two types of cancers before passing away in January of 2012 at the age of 7 continues to be his motivation to Beat Cancer. #elisarmy