RAD - Random Acts of Donation

Stepping away from all things China/aluminium/carbon for a moment, here is a website and an idea that deserves some support.

RAD - Random Acts of Donation - is a website designed to allow people to support their local lost dogs home or animal welfare centre. The idea of the website is that you select the home that you want to support from a drop-down list. That will bring up a feed of photos showing all their current “guests”. You can then choose a gift from another drop down list. Enter your credit card details, and hey presto RAD delivers your money directly to the home.

RAD promotes a strong message of transparency, so you can see exactly how much of your money has gone to the home, and how much has been taken in fees. The answer is, a tiny amount, and it is added on to your transaction, so the home gets virtually every cent you donated. For example, a $25 donation is loaded with a $2 surcharge that goes to RAD, so the home gets the full $25.

With this sort of transparency, and ease of use for the donor, RAD becomes very attractive to animal welfare centres. The more time they spend putting up photos and writing nice words about the dog or cat, the more that donors are likely to give.

RAD will be scalable, so it won’t be limited to dogs and cats in the vicinity of the website’s owners. In fact, it is the sort of idea that can scale way beyond dogs and cats.

I understand RAD is still getting the last hiccups out of the system, before hitting the scalability button. RAD’s owners are currently seeking donations, and have posted a video on a crowdfunding website. If you think this is a great idea, spend a few minutes of your Sunday looking at RAD’s video and donation site.

Full disclosure, RAD is the brainchild of my son Chris. But it’s a great idea regardless.