Why I’m Backing New Story Charity To Crowd Source Homes

(Note: this effort is something I’m involved with outside my responsibilities at McDonald’s)

In 2009 when a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, the world began to see how start-up like efforts could be applied to humanitarian crisis. The most noteworthy example is probably Ushahidi, a project that crowd sourced information about earthquake damage to develop optimized relief efforts — think Waze, but for social good.

At the time, I was running a business called Yahoo Local and along with a friend, had an urge to do something for Haiti too. Three weeks before SXSW we set a goal to build a new product from scratch and launch it there in Austin to maximize awareness. The goal was to introduce a way for local businesses to tweet offers with a portion of the proceeds benefitting a cause like Haiti. The initiative required tons of work, and we made the deadline, with our code functioning literally 10 minutes before a demo to a major publication. Now that’s a start-up thrill that you love telling after the fact!

Our initiative was challenged with scaling efforts, but I discovered how awesome it was to work with my project’s co-founder, a genius technologist named Mike Vo. (We continue to riff on things in rapid fire till this day.)

Fast forward to 2015 — it’s no surprise that when I heard about crowdsourcing homes for people in Haiti, and a bigger story around the future of charity my ears perked up.

That’s where New Story Charity, a Y Combinator (YC) company, come in. If you don’t know YC, it’s a preeminent incubator that has spawned some of the most commercially successful companies such as Dropbox, Airbnb, Coinbase, Reddit, and Instacart.

Philanthropy causes often leave donors asking one important question: ‘where EXACTLY is my money going?’

New Story Charity is answering that question by providing the utmost of clarity to their philanthropic endeavors — leaving their donors with a clear, emotional connection to the humans they are impacting.

Led by Brett Hagler and a great team, New Story is focused on building homes in places like Haiti, crowd funding life-saving homes for impoverished families who are in dire need of safety, health, and most importantly: hope.

Crowdsourcing is an amazing behavioral motivator for a lot of reasons: the joy of participating in the authentic creation of something, the transparency as it gets built, and the gratification of early involvement in something meaningful.

So it’s about time someone is applying crowdsourcing to one of the most meaningful applications you can imagine: helping other human beings get a home.

You’ll appreciate New Story’s mission of radical transparency.

“We believe transparency is the future of charity and have a strong desire to set the standard for a more transparent

culture in the nonprofit world,” writes New Story’s Matthew Marshall in the organization’s blog.

There is also an added touch of human connection that makes New Story such a standout charity in my eyes. Donors have access to exclusive video footage of the families they have impacted — watching the lives of previously hopeless individuals, change — tremendously. Donors get to see these individuals smile, lighting up at the new window of hope and opportunity that will drastically redirect their paths in life.

This organization is about kick starting a life-altering change in someone’s life; it’s about directly providing a glimmer of

hope in a world that seems hopeless.

Many smart folks in the technology space are particularly inspired by the team at New Story (check out their advisors here.)

And if you want to inspire change, and see a direct and meaningful impact with your philanthropy support, I seriously recommend you check out New Story’s page here to learn more.

Look out for more updates from me, hopefully from Haiti or another location where New Story has a presence.

-Atif Rafiq | McDonald’s Global Chief Digital Officer | @atifatif