Building a Search Engine for Social Good.
PREFACE: If you dont want to read this whole story, then at least check out the link and let me know what you think. If you want to help build this project, don't hesitate to reach out!
Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Nick, and I am an undergraduate student at the University of Alabama. Ironically, I am not a computer science major but have been learning the ropes of web development since around 12 years old.
My whole life I have always been interested in computers and charitable good. At the age of 16, I founded my first 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission of promoting philanthropy. As I embarked on the journey of running a nonprofit, I realized that some common practices could be improved. The biggest being that donor money should go directly to the cause, not operating expenses. This lead to multiple meetings and ideas of finding unconventional ways of fundraising, without sacrificing integrity or quality. The newest being our search engine.
The Search Engine
The Problem: Since the conception of my nonprofit, there has always been something that has bothered me, donor money paying the bills. As a frequent donor to other organizations, I firmly believe donations should go directly to the charitable cause. Not to the payroll or the utility bills. So to solve that issue, my mission is to become self-sustained which brought about the development of Searcha.
About: Searcha is a search engine that will serve nonprofits globally in means of capital for operating expenses, future projects, and a source of income. All proceeds generated with this engine will go to charity, and in the near future, we will be approved with our syndication partner to monetize user searches. This is when the real fun will begin.
Privacy is Key: Searcha will never track your searches. We care deeply about user privacy because, at the end of the day, we are consumers of our own product and want to be treated as such. Have the peace of mind of knowing you're privacy matters.
Call to Action: However, as mentioned before, I am not a computer science major. I am an economics and finance guy that knows his way around a little code. My team and I are going to need some help improving our design and implementing advertising API from our syndication partner. The idea behind us coming onto Hashnode is to apply our fundamental core belief of crowdsourced philanthropy. Our goal is to bring communities together to solve problems. If we can get a community to rally around this project and develop it to its full potential, then we would have been able to serve our purpose. All we ask is for some feedback on our site, maybe even an hour or two of help with implementing, improving, and developing our code. For everyone that helps in our endeavor, no matter how big or small, will be immortalized in our hall of fame for the rest of eternity and be a part of something bigger than themselves.
Hope all of us can make something out of this!
Regards,
Nick