Rough Draft

I have created a rough draft of how I want the site to work and I am pleased with how the site will look and feel. Not only am I looking to benefit the person who I’m helping, I am also wanting to provide the maximum benefit to the person or business spending the money on advertising.

I believe I have the best of both worlds created. The site will be separated into sections (Active causes, and successful causes).

It’s a little hard to describe how the site will look. Basically the advertising space that the person / business will purchase will be permanent. Once the cause is a success, it will be moved to our successful causes page that visitors can view. All the ads purchased will still be listed. In additional I will also feature the logo of any business who helped make this cause a success. So for businesses this will be an additional benefit. Not only will the business have the link from their ads, they will also have their logo displayed on the same page that people can quickly see what companies helped to make this cause a success. This is excellent for the company’s PR. This is a win-win for any business advertising online as they are giving their company a positive PR, a permanent link to their site, and it’s a relative low cost of advertising.

Legal Clarification

Hello everyone. It’s been a busy few days. I’ve been calling around to get information on my requirements for starting this type of site. I want to know if I need to register as a non profit organization or a charity to start this site. I guess my site is unique because I am unable to find anyone who can give me a direct answer.

On one hand the site will be collecting money for a cause, however I am not collecting it directly. The money received will be directly a result of selling advertising space. Therefore it’s not the same as someone making a donation to a charity where the donation is tax deductible.

The person making the purchase knows that they are doing so to help someone. From what I can tell, I can just go ahead and open the site without having to register to do so, but I don’t want to take the chance and get myself in trouble.

The only requirement I see that I will need is permission from the person who the site is helping to be able to post their information and/or picture. I don’t expect this to be hard to get.

In the mean time, I am still waiting to hear back from law guru to confirm if there are any legal issues I should be aware of before starting. I’m going to call a few local lawyers as well, but I can’t afford to hire a lawyer just yet. Like I mentioned before, this site is a personal project of mine. I’m doing it out of my home on my own time.

Hi Sam!!!

I just came across this site called Stuff4Sam. It’s a blog dedicated to raising money to help a 2 year old boy.

Stuff4Sam is about raising money for our 2 year old friend Sam who was paralysed in a car accident last year. We hope to raise 20k in order to buy him a special equipment to stimulate him and help him develop.

At the time of this posting they have raised £18,279 of the total £20,000 needed. I donated £1.00 ($2.01US) towards the cause. I know it’s not much, but that’s all I had on my Paypal account and I know every bit counts.

This blog is the reason for my site!!!! I want to create a community of people who can help people like this easily. My Qwest on myspace is to reach 100,000 friends. Now imagine how quick and easy 100,000 caring people can help children like this around the world. 100,000 people would only need to donate £0.20 and this child would have the special equipment he needs to stimulate and help him develop.

I have a 2½ year old son myself and know how fast they are developing. This equipment will make a huge difference in this boy’s life. And for the sake of £0.20!!!!

In need of a Theme :)

You may notice that the theme on the site may change frequently.  I’m trying to decide on which theme to keep that works best for the site.  I need a theme that will work well with the 3rd party scripts I’m running (for the advertising space, etc).

Once the site gains momentum, I will hire a designer from guru.com or elance.com to create a design and integrate everything together.  In the mean time I need to keep costs to a minimum to get the site up and running.

Design donations welcomed!  If you’re a designer who is willing to donate their time to create a design that integrates Wordpress, a forum (either phpBB or bbPress), myspace page, and another 3rd party script (advertising script which I believe supports themes, possibly smarty), please contact me. 

In the meantime, please check back often.  If you are a myspace user and want to help be part of this effort, please add me as a friend!!!  Thanks!

Legality Question…

I contacted Lawguru.com today to get a few questions answered.  Like I mentioned in my about Pixel 4 Kindess page, I am very excited about this site and think it’s a great idea that can help many individuals and families.

I’m not a lawyer so I have no idea about the laws are regarding this.   Personally I don’t think what I’m doing requires the same as being a charity.  I’m not directly collecting money for charities (per se).  I am selling advertising space and with the money from the sale of the space I am dontating 80% of it to a cause.

I guess if I was just selling advertising space with no mention of donating the money, there wouldn’t be a question, but when you add donating the money into the picture, then I think there might be a few legalities I should know about.

Unfortuntely I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer at the moment.  I’m doing this from my home in my spare time.  That’s why I turned to a lawyer on Lawguru.com as they are qualified lawyers who will answer my questions at no charge.