Fulfilling the Promise of Micro-Philanthropy - a Web-Based Approach March 7, 2008

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Google Tech Talks
March, 5 2008

ABSTRACT

"A revolutionary charity." -- Oprah Winfrey

"This new philanthropy system is turning traditional philanthropy on its head." -- ABC World News Tonight

"I encourage everybody to go on and make donations...let's make a difference." -- Stephen Colbert

"The results are powerful." -- BusinessWeek

"I think the capacity to expand is infinite." -- Bill Clinton

DonorsChoose.org's Founder and CTO will introduce the org, and discuss this example of real micro-philanthropy in action through the lens of the site's transactional data, usage trends, web marketing, user generated content, and underlying technologies.

More about DonorsChoose.org: Founded in 2000 by a young public high school teacher in the Bronx, citizen philanthropists from all 50 states and 10 countries have already funded more than 45,000 public school classroom projects at DonorsChoose.org, channeling over $19 million of resources to students in low-income communities. At DonorsChoose.org, someone giving $10 enjoys the same choice, impact, and vivid feedback that-until now-have been reserved for millionaire benefactors. Recognition of DonorsChoose.org includes the Nonprofit Innovation Award given by Stanford Business School and Amazon.com; the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award; a Global Technology Laureate from the TECH Museum of Innovation; and selection by Ashoka. Major supporters include eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Yahoo! co-founder David Filo, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, and Netflix founder Reed Hastings.

Speaker: Charles Best
CEO & Founder of DonorsChoose

Charles Best founded DonorsChoose.org at Wings Academy, a public high school in the Bronx where he was a social studies teacher for five years. He thought up DonorsChoose.org during a lunch conversation with colleagues, and his students volunteered to help start the organization. To entice his fellow teachers to try out the new website, Charles offered them his mother's famous pear dessert. DonorsChoose.org has been growing since.

Speaker: Oliver Hurst-Hiller
CTO DonorsChoose

Oliver leads the DonorsChoose.org engineering team and is responsible for the technology systems that power DonorsChoose.org's unique philanthropic marketplace. Prior to joining the team, Oliver worked as a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft where he managed product engineering projects for Microsoft's new Internet search engine. He also worked with renowned computer scientist Dr. Gary Flake to start Microsoft Live Labs, a new applied research laboratory for Internet technologies. Oliver joined Microsoft when the Windows Tablet PC group acquired EQuill, a venture-backed software start-up that he co-founded and led for three years as CEO. He is a co-inventor of an issued U.S. patent related to web-based document annotation and multiple pending patents for Internet search-related technologies. Oliver graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Computer Science and spent the first 13 years of his academic career attending New York City public schools.