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Ask HN: We Built a Micro Donation Platform. Now what?

4 points by njsubedi ↗ HN
We are a team of four, who are still finding a "Idea that really really solves people's problems" and we found one. In Nepal (a developing country), there is no any payment/funding/donation platform yet - because of restriction from Central bank. We built something like "Kickstarter" but for social good cause, and for microfunding.

We want to extend it globally, and need suggestions and information from fellow hackers around the world about it. What exactly we need to know is - do other telecom companies provide their SMS gateway integration, and reduction in mobile phone's balance credit like they do in Nepal?

Here we have several services that deduct from NPR. 1 to NPR. 3,300 for a service. We can use that to let people donate for good causes. We'd love to hear from you guys, esp. if you have already developed a crowd funding platform, or worked on similar ideas.

We are totally confused about whether limiting our service within Nepal or try to extend globally.

PS: The platform was developed in a Hackathon organized by Geeklist. #Hack4GoodKTM

Here is the Geeklist achievement card: https://geekli.st/njsubedi/we-built-sms-based-micro-donation-platform-at-hack4good-02-kathmandu

Here is the prototype app: http://www.donate4good.net

And here is the simple documentation: http://git.geekli.st/public/projects/njsubedi/donate4good

We'd really appreciate any suggestion or complaints.

3 comments

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jsnk
How do I view campaigns?
rmanisha
Note: I work at @ Balanced payments and specialize in Customer Success. I've never started my own CF platform but work with several donation and crowdfunding platforms.

I have little to no understanding of the Nepali payments infrastructure but here's my non technical perspective on this question:

>We are totally confused about whether limiting our service within Nepal or try to extend globally.

My recommendation would be to allow for global donations but limit your platform to Nepali causes. This will give your platform a differentiation factor but more importantly, allow you to dig into the nuanced needs of a specific culture.

You can increase global awareness as well as harness global charity. Limiting to Nepali donations would be restrictive since charitable culture tends to exist more heavily outside of that region.

There is a general fascination with Nepali culture (thank you, Himmalayas!), and crowdfunding efforts to help as well as document (i.e. financing photographers and amateur sociologists who wish to capture the life and time of Nepal) would be very effective.

Good Luck!