Free/open software allows for the bottom-up creation of a relational donation network and I am working hard on getting a new service up and running (based on Drupal) to truly realize this. A more official post about this service will be made some other time, but for now you can already see the testing version of this service in action. This is an early version, because I have many more ideas, but at least the first release has all the required base functionality to later build further upon. Basically Donorge wants new and more effective donation powers to become a reality for reasons and interests going beyond software alone. Realizing this so far has been possible for me to do thanks to (most importantly) Drupal.
When you support something financially with donations, you support it because you believe it serves an interest in relation to you or another interest. For a long time I have kept the development of this project completely for myself, because I wanted Donorge to have a solid base and above all: have it really working (not just having ideas, but to have a complete working concept). Donorge is now arriving at the point where it can go into the open and I look forward to it's future. I look forward to helping Drupal with donations, I look forward to helping anyone with donations and I look forward to helping evolve the general shared interest behind Donorge of donations. From Donorge it's perspective, the true value of donations go beyond free/open software and are about supporting the growing of human ideas and supporting humans themselves.
If you support Donorge so far, let me know!
The fully working demo/testing version can be found at: http://testing.donorge.org
Comments
Drupal based?
Is this all drupal based? I've been working on something similar based on civicspace for non-profits and missions groups. When will the code be opened?
Drupal based
Donorge is a big module build on Drupal, so all base functionality is Drupal based, but all donation related functionality is made by Donorge. The module is _not_ designed to be plugable/portable as I suspect you would like, it is designed/dedicated for a donation service called Donorge, but based on the GPL. There is already a place on Savannah dedicated to Donorge and the code will be uploaded within weeks.
which version of Drupal?
Which version of Drupal is it based on? Also which payment processors can be used? I really like the relational apsect.
reply
>>Which version of Drupal
At the moment of writing you this: 4.5.0. Donorge will always be based on the 'latest and greatest' of Drupal, which now means 4.5.0 (I started developing Donorge based on earlier Drupal versions and have updated several times already before)
>>which payment processors can be used
As Donorge is a starting undertaking, the whole payment process will have to mature, but from the start Donorge will support direct international bank account payments. After Donorge has started on-line, other payment methods will be added as soon as possible. The more payments methods supported, obviously the better the service is. Also, with Donorge both donors and receivers can choose their method of payment _and_ receiving.
some thoughts about open source and funding
hello, http://donorge.org/ is not resolving.
anyway, still interested in the project. and wonder if there's alredy groups devloping such things. i'm surprised that sourceforge.net or even savannah haven't such donation type projects in the works. i view it as a similar thing to ebay or amazon where people can come and donate to whatever causes or software projects they think are important. As long as it's organized and people can track where their money goes and granularity (even put money towards squashing a particular bug) it's feasible, IMO. I guess one idea behind open source is that the developers are not forced into anything, and that is definitely something to preserve, and i think it's beneficial to the whole process. But I wonder how incorporating money to a project can benefit and hurt a open source project. Like there has to be some rules that will probably take some experience to get right, but I'd think it's definitely something people need.
Here's something I posted to drupal-support ML:
sourceforge.net is a place where you can organize your project but why
aren't people interested in funding projects? It could work similar to ebay but
instead of selling items, software would get produced and released to the world
for free or under creative commons licenses. It's a way for people to combine
their monetary value if they have similar interests or software goals. If
thousands of people could pool their money they would have more clout. And if
people could see the effects their money is making they would likely be inspired
to contribute again into a project. But just the occasional paypal button
without an organized view of how and where the money is going, or what is the
most important bug to get fixed, isn't as appealing to people.
I know this is beyond drupal, and it's more of an open question. But
i thought it would be helpful to drupal to spark a little curiosity.
Actually it's probably a good question for the mozilla folks.
The supporting of creation
Hi mio, donorge.org is moving to another server at this moment this is why it is not resolving at the moment.
>>anyway, still interested in the project. and wonder if there's already groups developing such things. I'm surprised that sourceforge.net or even Savannah haven't such donation type projects in the works.
There are no donation solutions as Donorge approaches donations being developed that I am aware of. Donorge uses Savannah for it's development, but has no intention of integrating some kind of donation mechanism specific for any single site or service. The interests behind donations reach far beyond software and also touch the supporting of 'itches of mankind'. Often software also shares important interests with organizations not related to software at all. In my belief, donations and the transparant development of a dedicated donation solution for whatever donation causes is something valuable and is one of the reasons why I started developing Donorge privately more then a year ago.
>>As long as it's organized and people can track where their money goes and granularity (even put money towards squashing a particular bug) it's feasible,
A bug wanting to be squashed, a feature to be implemented is an investment to which to expect a defined return. Donations are not invest-return (money-feature) related at all. Therefor it is important how Donorge sees two kinds of money related issues, one of which has nothing to do with donations at all:
1. You somehow direct money towards a specific goal inside an organization. This is a more direct means of what some call 'donating', which it is not. This is simply investing in features or wishes and the desired implementation of them, this is applying a market mechanism of whatever imagined kind. This does not always act in the interest of the organization itself. It can interfear with the actual (desired) process inside the organization and it can mean loss of control over some parts of development. This will work for some and most definitely not for others. It cannot ever be a single working solution. With software, this kind of 'investing' means being a money-feature solution stuck to all kind of rules and diplomacy. This solution will somehow always intrude with the quality of the code itself, because it will interupt the development process itself. This will work for some and most definitely not for others. Mind you, no single ideal and widely addopted working solution for this has ever ex-histed in the year 2004.
2. You donate to an organization and the interest it represents in order to support it. You trust that organization to act in the best interest of your donation. Other services ex-hist to represent interests related to development (of features). You no longer support the project if you believe it makes no difference or you find another project better organized or represented. You trust and understand that an organization operates using a model of development/progress which is essentially self organizing or optimized to benefit that organization and the donors interest. A donation by it's nature plays a supportive role. Donorge thinks the value and nature of donations have not yet been recognized and organized. Donorge makes apparent the need for building trust, transparency and required ability of a bottom-top self creating relational donation networks (as a beginning).
What Donorge basically says is, wake up, no ideal invest-feature mechanism will ever ex-hist. Open source always has depended on support in many forms and donations are just another layer of that: support. So we better exploit donations to the their maximum, we better generate as many donations as possible and make the whole process of donations much more effective if we want to receive more and make easier supporting at all.
Donorge simply sees everything as interests. You donate towards interests. You want multimedia to improve on Linux, where the heck should you donate to? Who are representing the relevent interests around it, who are the important players in this field? What people, what projects and how established or trusted are they? As such, when related to free/open software development, Donorge is simply just something optimized for the donation process itself and the showing of how good, essential or trusted a project is trough the visibility of relations. Key importance being the bottom-top control of each item/project to show and indicate relations. Also the ability to see libraries as very important donation targets becomes possible this way.
The ability of donating towards features and a specific progress inside an organization is considered 'intrusive' from Donorge it's point of view. Donorge represents a principle this way. Donorge simply offers the effective ability of making donations and seeing relevant relations between interests. Donorge takes a somewhat different standpoint. Also inside Donorge, individuals themselves can become items relating to other items. Donorge is not developed purely for open source, it is developed as an effective general purpose donation engine which aligns or offers the ability to align interests going beyond just open source.
>>But I wonder how incorporating money to a project can benefit and hurt a open source project.
The benefit is the supportive role money can play, but it can mean negative influence also. It can interupt the development process when it no longer is used to support the organization or the interest it represents or aims to. This is why Donorge sees donations as playing a clean and supportive role. How can donors best direct their donations towards interests they want to support? If the organization is no longer or not to your liking, you do not support it, it's that simple. You support what you deem important and as a larger group of donors that is the first step in making donations more effective. In turn, projects indicate what they deem important, it's simple but very effective.
I think it is very important to agree that no single ideal software money-feature solution ex-hists or will ever ex-hist. This is why I have seen several software funding solutions come and go (or be doomed to the background). Donorge looks at this purely from the ability of organizations to organize themselves, the organization of interests. When you donate to Donorge, you can trust it to keep developing it's donation interests, if you donate to Drupal, just can trust it to improve a CMS etc. etc. (otherwise you will see project forks). This does not rule out a project can adopt, besides using donations, a money-feature solution for itself. A project would however, always have the general need for simply donations (no one would ever 'study' or understand each different money-feature solution created and they would always differ in their effectiveness and flexibility).
>>sourceforge.net is a place where you can organize your project but why
aren't people interested in funding projects?
In part this is a problem going beyond Sourceforge. Free sounds good enough and most see no use in donating at all. Maybe the effect and power donations can have has not been realized by users themselves and a lack of a good general donation solution is part and root of the problem. One reason for Sourceforge is that it limits the ability of donating to within the Sourceforge service only. Also many many people don't care about a site made for software developers and to have to go there to make donations to just some software projects they might have heard of or be using. It greatly isolates the wide and general concepts behind donations. Sourceforge is a development solution trying to add donations where it should accept donations better organized and recognized as a separate interest.
>>It could work similar to ebay but
instead of selling items, software would get produced and released to the world
for free or under creative commons licenses. It's a way for people to combine
their monetary value if they have similar interests or software goals. If
thousands of people could pool their money they would have more clout. And if
people could see the effects their money is making they would likely be inspired
to contribute again into a project. But just the occasional paypal button
without an organized view of how and where the money is going, or what is the
most important bug to get fixed, isn't as appealing to people.
Donations offer only support and are not about any investment-feature process. The real issue are 'low profile bugs', how to get action there? Bugzilla (services like Bugzilla) is designed for how to manage bugs/features/wishes, it is not designed how to get developers to invest time to do the job. Votes for a wish/bug make it more likely for 'popular bugs' to be fixed within how (e.g.) bugzilla works. For now I frankly believe here is a tradeoff we cannot ever move around. You cannot expect a money-feature solution to not somehow corrupt the development progress (there will always be many tradeoffs) and you cannot expect 'low profile bugs' to be resolved when donations are made towards general interests as organizations only. Such is the nature of the beast. Never mind that no single money-feature soltution has ever been accepted as ideal.
Free/open software it's life pulse is based on support and so far it frankly has failed to recognize and organize this life pulse at the donation level. In isolation I dedicated more then a year to give a heart for a life pulse and will continue to do so. I give a dedicated beginning to inspire the giving. Free/open software needs to be supported by contributors in the form of code, contributors in documentation, infrastructure etc. etc. Donations by their definition are the most fundamental of all, a supporter of the organization itself. The best of all, Donorge is designed to work beyond just open source, I want Donorge to align interests where donations are concerned. No organization is the same, no single money-feature solution will fit all. A money-feature solution also neglects the organization itself - a fundamental problem. Donations are the most fundamental supportive input an organization can receive, it does not offer in return a direct feature value, it only grants a creation and supports it. This is the principle and basis for reasoning behind Donorge. Donorge will see money-feature solutions come and go, but donations will always play their supportive role and Donorge is dedicated to the supporting of that role itself.
Very philosophical
I'm very curious about how it actually works. When will it be online?
How do people decide what they are donating to? Can people pool thier money, and how? Do the people making the donations have any control over the money once it gets donated? The devil is in the details. What are the details?
- Robert Douglass
-----
visit me at www.robshouse.net
>>When will it be online?
>>When will it be online?
It was already but is now moving to a new server (the fact you cannot access it right now is one of other reasons for the move). The current version is a test version where the last step, the real payment process itself is being finalized, but all other ex-histing functionality is done. That means I still have many things I want to implement, but for the first release version things are done and already very complete for a donation solution. You should be able to use it within weeks to make real donations. A testing version will also remain on-line to ...test and further build upon.
>>How do people decide what they are donating to?
Using Drupal as an example target to donate to, notice that PayPal donation button to the right on this page? In that case you donate simply because you wanted to donate to Drupal in the first place. If that button was connected to Donorge, the same would apply, however, once you are on Donorge that is where the difference begins. On PayPal you just pay (and only using PayPal). PayPal was not designed for donations, but to make payments and it's very good at doing just that. On donorge now you would be able to see more about (in this case) Drupal and how it relates to other projects. Who depends on Drupal? Who does Drupal depend upon? For each relation some information might be provided by Drupal about it's relations. Does it have friend relations (projects it considers important but not in a depending way)?
Now the donor might decide based on what it just saw to donate to another project as well (or spread the donation) because it sees how it can also support Drupal by not just supporting Drupal alone. The donor now learns more about the interest of CMS itself and how to donate towards that interest. The donor now also has the ability to see connections in relation to making donations and better see who it can trust to donate to at all.
Next to that, the donor can browse the category to which Drupal belongs in Donorge and see in it's category what projects have most relations of which type etc.
So to answer your question, people via Donorge can currently decide where to donate to on the basis of how projects themselves indicate they relate to other projects (Donorge simply calls this donation tips). In effect, Drupal could also opt to auto donate percentages to projects it chooses to. All this ability to see relations also helps isolate untrusted projects (an organization can say it investigates into a cure for Aids and seek donations, but no one indicates to trust this organization and it also has no relation to any project at all - unwise to donate to or wait to see trust grow and for what reasons that trust grows).
>>Can people pool thier money, and how?
This depends on what you mean by pooling money and what is to trigger pools for what reasons etc. etc. Pools introduce many many questions and often a fair touch of diplomacy in relation of how to establish rules for pools. No pooling is implemented so far, because not enough solid foundation for any of that has been established yet. If an effective pool solution is obvious it would be implemented. If the solution means hard to define optimal or highly variable ways to define rules, I tend to stay away from it until convinced of it's solid nature in mechanism.
>>Do the people making the donations have any control over the money once it gets donated?
No, they still are donations. That might sound as a bummer, but do not forget that this is a very idealistic wish actually, because there ex-hists no mechanism to assure the donor it's donation is controlled the way he/she desired. This would basically boil down to: "hey if I donate this, please do this" where they say "sure", if they don't do it, well bad luck for you. You get the point. Donorge _is not and will not ever be_ about influencing how donations are spend inside organizations. This is something Donorge does not want to intrude in, still a donor could create agreements outside of Donorge or use Donorge for handling donations inside another solution.
If I give you money for your birthday no way should I expect you to buy a specific CD. Giving money basically implies giving a certain freedom of choice and anything else is invest-feature related. Donorge is about donations and building on ideas around that, it cannot possible ever control how an organization uses a donation, that's not the nature of donations and Donorge is simply not a invest-feature based solution.
Look forward to it
I hope to see it online soon - I already know of a way I would like to use it!
- Robert Douglass
-----
visit me at www.robshouse.net
When will it be back up?
When will donorge be back up and when will it be available in Savannah? Also, is there an eta on greater processing functionality- authorize.net, verisign, etc?
Within 7 days the first funct
Within 7 days the first functional release should be up, along with the code on Savannah.
About money processing functionality, such services all cost Donorge money to support (which needs to be earned first) - ignoring for the moment the problems each carries with them. Donorge wants to have a discussion about this on Donorge itself first. General internet based money processing functionality biggest direct obstacles for Donorge currently are: safety, flexibility and cost and I prefer to talk about this openly. For now, Donorge will begin to work by supporting bank accounts in order to establish a stable site environment backed by bank securities to rely upon. I appreciate your interest so far and will be able to talk more about Donorge and specific issues on the Donorge site when it first gets on-line. There will be a forum for such discussions. Hope this answers your question.
I can notify you when the test release is up by email if you sent an email to donorge@donorge.org on that test release you can test anything you want and do fake donations. Such a testing version is likely to remain on-line next to the release version.
what is new about this?
There already is a service called groundspring.org, designed for nonprofits, and it is not clear how donorge is going to be different. please elaborate
Organizers' Collaborative -- Free Software for Activist Groups
http://organizenow.net and http://organizersdb.org
differences
First of all, Donorge is an open source project (GPL). Donorge was started for a better donation network targeted towards open source software, but to also work equally usefull for any type entity receiving donations. Donorge is inherently more about community, transparency, bottom-top control and relational data, where other donation solutions are not always clearly that.
But to get more specific, I will go trough some things I can see on groundspring.org step by step (if I am wrong about certain groundspring.org features, please correct me):
Pricing:
groundspring.org: $129 (standard page) or $199 (custom page) $14.95 monthly for nonprofits with annual budgets under $250,000 $24.95 monthly for nonprofits with annual budgets over $250,000 3% of each donation
donorge.org: simply 7% of each donation (and Donorge aims to make it even cheaper)
This means on Donorge you sign up for absolutely free and fees are simply collected via donations from donors, so you never have to pay Donorge anything for using the service to receive donations, it's your donors who support you, remember? The more people start using Donorge, the cheaper and lower that fee could become. If Donorge can arrange good sponsors or receives enough donations itself, Donorge might even become completely free or start a fee spreading functionality (meaning you would have periods where donations have a fee and sometimes donations have no fee, the fees would be spread out over other donations on donorge).
Also, Donorge allows anyone to collect donations and does not care if you are a person or an non-profit organization or from Mars. It seems groundspring.org is targeted towards non-profit (501(c)(3) organizations) only.
Now on the steps as I can read them on http://www.groundspring.org/services/donatenow.cfm:
>>Customized donation pages that match the look of your site
Donorge has at least one page where you can use custom HTML for your item, effectively meaning the same. Also your logo appears on all pages connected to your item.
>>Choose your own donation amounts and pictures of Thank-you gifts
Just like the above, Donorge has a custom HTML thank you page for each item (or you turn the feature off). There are also about 20 donation buttons to choose from to use on your site, but choosing donation amount with buttons on your own site is harder because Donorge is not US centric, it is build to support different exchange rates, but deals internally with Euro's. This means, you will be able to set the donation amount via a button on your site, but you are not likely to see reference to that exact amount in your currency. There are other ways Donorge can solve this still. But sure enough Donorge can't help this horrible global monetary system in the year 2004. It has an inherent problem in relation to receiving donations internationally, not to mension the damage it is doing to nations all over the world - talking about exchange rates here.
>>Tell-a-Friend notifications let a donor to send an email to friends and colleagues to tell them about the gift they've just made
Well, this can't be done on Donorge currently, but this is really such an easy thing to implement and if enough people want to see it added, it will be added. How many email do you receive about 'friends and colleagues' telling you who they just send gifts to? Anyway, if people really want it, it is likely to be added.
>>Real-time donation processing and monthly funds distribution
I am not sure what they mean with real-time donation processing. Anything on Donorge is real-time when it is processed obviously, do they mean payment processing via credit card? Donorge processes a donation when it is on the Donorge bank account, no sooner. In follow up, the funds distribution, on Donorge this is not based on a set time interval currently. This is now based on a donation pool, if your donation pool (which collects all your donations) gets above a self set amount, Donorge sends you the funds collected in it. This could still be coupled with a custom time interval, or a combination of both.
>>24-hour access to your donor information
Well, the site is on-line 24 hours a day 7days a week.
>>No merchant account required, we do the credit card processing
Donorge has no credit card support just yet. Please remember Donorge is very young. Implementing support would not take much time, but it is more an issue of being able to financially support it at this early moment, which means Donorge can't implemented this just yet. That said, Donorge is not a credit card fan.
>>Match the look of your site with custom donation pages
Isn't that the same as their first point?
>>Recurring donations for monthly donations
Donorge offers 20 donation baskets which donors can use for recurring donations or just use as templates. A donation basket holds details about a donation, items and payment so that donors can create their own preferred donation strategies. The automatic triggering of donation baskets after chosen intervals is easy and quick to add to Donorge as well and likely to appear soon when Donorge gets on-line. It means Donorge allows much more freedom, creativity and control in relation to recurring donations.
>>Expand your base with integrated email and Tell-a-Friend buttons
Not sure what they mean, but Donorge offers no personal email account or something like that. Not sure what a tell-a-friend button is either, I think frankly it simply is sending an email to a friend by pushing a button? If integrated email means a sort of mailinglist for your organization, this might be supported if in demand.
>>Complete management of state charitable solicitation registration
I am no US resident and do not know for sure what is meant with this at this moment. I am not sure this has to do with the general interests around donations as it seems very US specific.
>>Easily import donation information into your donor system
Not supported. If people would like to see such a feature, it would be implemented, but currently Donorge is about donations via Donorge and it's network.
>>Charitable donation tax receipts capable of deducting value thank-you gifts
Not supported yet.
>>Customized thank you messages
This seems allot like an earlier point they made and I have explained this in another point already.
Donorge currently also has a points list (likely to grow) (I would also like to note that Donorge supports features it does not deem worthy to put on this list, where other donation solutions claim relatively trivial points as valuable):
* Use donorge to make donations: (either with or without a user account)
o Discover how organizations relate to each other
o Isolated or 'vague' items are easy to detect
o Quickly browse items based on categories, filters and relations
o Donate to several items at once
o Manage up to 20 donation baskets for quick and easy re-usage
o Detailed public/private donation history
o Full private/anonymous functionality supported
o Donorge supports all webbrowsers
* Use donorge to receive donations:
o Enables you to indicate how your item relates to other items
o Customizable page dedicated to your item (HTML and logo)
o Have a donation button on your site
o Detailed public/private donation history
o Full private/anonymous functionality supported
o Donate to other items on Donorge on behalf of your item
o For each donation you receive, auto donate to other items
o Ability to transfer your item administration to another Donorge account
o Donorge supports all webbrowsers
Now onto structural differences. On Donorge donors would be able to see how your item (organization) relates to other items (organizations). Donorge simply calls these understandable 'donation tips', but really it means Donorge enables the bottom-top creation of a relational donation network - which can really help open source software donations, but can effectively be applied to anything wanting donations. It also allows items to auto donate percentages to other items.
On Drupal you have many many modules, which all relate to Drupal. Donorge allows offers an effective donation solution for all these modules and Drupal itself. In turn, Donorge itself also relates to Drupal. Any item (organization) has relations, even individuals can have relations in this regard to other items on Donorge. Donorge also allows donors to see who they can trust to donate to. Isolated or vague projects are easy to detect and items can help build trust for items where donors can benefit from.
At the Donorge index page you will always see the main categories and donors can browse from there on. To the point functional interface or graphics for a task at hand. Donors browse based on categories, filters and relations and can discover many new interesting and effective donation tips for themselves this way. Donorge wants to make donations themselves much more trusted, effective and wants to increase the likelyhood that donations are going towards your organization, based on the interests around your organization, all mainly by exploiting relational data, transparency and localized control. To increase the likelyhood you will receive donations at all, all based on interests localized around your organization.
Those are some of the current most important differences.
not open source
Well, groundspring.org isn't open source. They are seeking money for their products and they aren't user interactive allowing for relationships to be made with organizations. From what I've understood, donorge shows relationships between organizations and who supports them and helps donors make more informed decsions. Finally, groundspring's program doesn't really communicate with other programs like Drupal, so there isn't really a correlation between a drupal site and their groundspring site where people donate, unlike paypal's IPN or services offered by merchant gateways like authorize.net.
Anything happening with this?
Just wondering what happened to donorge? Will there be testing up soon and code at savannah?