Author: Peter

What NEED does this meet?

This proposal targets young people that are keen volunteers, ambassadors and/or fundraisers of a particular cause or charity (ie. the college rag / gap year market). It will help them promote their interest/causes, get inspired and network with likeminded individuals.

The project enables an ‘activity hub’ that would be key to sustaining youth’s philanthropic enthusiasm and societal concerns beyond the ‘honeymoon’ years of self discovery. It would also allows participants the opportunity to share their interest with friends and family to inspire in-kind or monetary support, thus furthering their ambition.

What is the APPROACH?

A virtual community, ala myspace.com, that targets young people that are keen volunteers, ambassadors and/or fundraiser of a particular cause or charity.

The aim would be to allow young people that are involved to share their enthusiasm, views and work. On par with online fundraising (www.justgiving.com), participants could setup their own personal page hosting a blog, key events & a message board for people to post encouragement on.

Representing the time rich, money poor youth market (eg. college rag generation), participants could fwd this link to friends or relatives and ask them to support their cause by getting involved, donating, recycling, sending a letter to an MP, etc- similar to event sponsorship but about participants overall interest (eg international development, conservation, etc) rather than a challenge event and not limited to monetary support.

This would also act as great networking tool / source of inspiration as you could search by causes, etc.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

Participants will utilise the site as an activity hub as:
-an outlet to promote views and causes their passionate about
-an opportunity to network with like-minded individuals
-a forum to research a particular interest or concern and see what others are doing
-a tool to promote the cause to friends & relatives to either raise funds, inspire particpation and/or recieve encouragement

What is the COMPETITION?

None that I know of. There is unfortunately an American commerce portal occupying the mycause.com URL, but mycause.org or mycause.co.uk are fair game.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

I’d imagine £30k minimum startup for a good site / promotion. Ongoing monitoring, hosting and upkeep costs in addition.

Promotion would require an initial push to get college / uni intranets to link/promote the site and presence at RAG weeks (could be done by commissioning reps per school to promote it). Charities could also promote it to their involved young people as a way to publicise their efforts.

Once established, I imagine it would have a good viral /grassroots rollout and promote itself.