Web application & email tools help charity ChildsDream.org make a difference in Thailand.
Providing news, accepting donations, changing lives.
Who they are.
Child's Dream is a non-profit charitable organization based in Chiang Mai, Thailand helping underprivileged children in Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Laos. They provide very hands on support to acquire equipment and facilities, to make a real difference in children's lives. A whopping 90% + of every dollar donated goes toward the projects they support. Ask your favorite charity if their administration fees are less than 10%.
What they needed.
Child's Dream wanted to leverage technology to provide news about children's issues in S.E. Asia, and stay in touch with their donor base. They needed to be able to make real-time updates on the progress of their projects. They also needed to upload stories and photos on the fly from any cyber-cafe, and they needed a secure way to accept on-line credit card donations. Now add to this that they needed the entire site to be bi-lingual, because a large part of their donating constituency is based in Switzerland! Oh, and they needed it in less than a month.
Enter Decisive.
During the discovery phase (brief as it was), I learned that they had a novel idea for this charity's interaction with its financial supporters. They wanted all donors to see project proposals, and then vote if they wanted their money toward a particular project. Wow, talk about feeling good about where your money goes.
This seemed to be a perfect fit with a self-aware email marketing application (see image on bottom left). If you present the information in the email, why not collect their vote from inside the email? What could be simpler that that. The user reads the attractively formatted HTML, email then clicks YES or NO. The information is logged to the Child's Dream database without the user ever having to leave MS Outlook (or whatever email client they happen to use).
- ASP coding 
- Database
- Email marketing 
- HTML newsletters 
- Data encryption 
- Doc/pic upload 
- Credit card acceptance
- User management 
- Multi-lingual site 
