Announcing Dollar a Day!

I’m excited to announce the launch of Dollar a Day, a nonprofit campaign I’ve been building alongside an amazing, dedicated, and almost entirely volunteer team.

Dollar a Day is a simple new way for people to discover and support nonprofits that do great work. Don’t let the name fool you, though. Discovery is at the heart of Dollar a Day.

So how does Dollar a Day work?

1. Every day we feature one amazing nonprofit. We select nonprofits in six key areas: Education, Health, Economic Development, Arts & Culture, Environment, and Human Rights. (Visit the site for full selection criteria and upcoming calendar).
2. Every day we send out a simple email about that nonprofit — we share a paragraph we’ve written about their mission and work, and link to their site for those that want to learn more. These emails are an incredibly easy way to be introduced to great nonprofits.
3. Every day everyone (who’s signed up) automatically donates a dollar to that featured nonprofit. No daily decisions to make, no customization — every day we’re all supporting the featured nonprofit, together. (Donations are charged monthly, $30 / 30 days, not a $1 charge each day.)

$1 a day can really help. Every 3,000 donors is over a million dollars per year to nonprofits.

We also offer our daily email to anyone for free. Why? Potentially the biggest impact Dollar a Day can have is introducing people to nonprofits that resonate with them. Dollar a Day donors or not, anyone can use these emails as a gateway to give directly, volunteer for, or simply learn more about a variety of great organizations and the problems they’re trying to solve. A public more fluent in nonprofits and their work is really exciting.

Everyone knows about the Red Cross, but what other nonprofits are doing great work?

A few other things:

• Donations are 100% US tax-deductible
• We’re a nonprofit too!
• Dollar a Day makes no money from donations on the site. Our minimal expenses are covered by a few direct donations.
• It took us — a small core team working one night a week (Monday night!) — about a year to get here. David and Cassie are now staff, overseeing the nonprofit selection process, community support, and more. As Board members, Zack Sears, Tieg Zaharia, Ben Stone and I are contributing about 5–10 hours a week, sometimes more (like this launch week!), doing design, development, product, copy, and whatever else is needed.

Why did we start Dollar a Day? There’s a ton of good intentions that don’t easily translate to action. Finding great organizations can be difficult, and people are (unfortunately) busier than ever. We wanted to make it easy for people to both discover and support great nonprofits — removing as much friction as possible, and building an ongoing, and hopefully ever-growing, campaign.

We’re super excited for you to see it!
Please visit Dollar a Day.

Thanks for reading,
Perry Chen w/ Zack Sears, Tieg Zaharia, Ben Stone, David Leeds, and Cassie Marketos.

THANKS to the many people helped us, and are continuing to help us: Aaron Bourke (and the law firm Reed Smith), Nessim Higson, Gaurav Chandrashekar, Joshua Kushner, Zack Shankman, Ari Kuschnir, Ryan Closner, Rachel Tennenbaum, Stephen Blaker, Safwat Saleem, Carl Chen, Justin Kazmark.

https://dollaraday.co/