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Lessons from Open Source - SmartCause.org in Public Beta
For several years, I worked at a Linux software company. For those of you who don't know, Linux is an operating system, like Windows or Mac. But while Windows is made by people in cubicles at Microsoft and Mac is made by people in more stylish cubicles at Apple, Linux is developed by thousands of volunteers all over the world.
It's a software technique called "open source," people develop portions of software that they are passionate about and contribute their additions and improvements. The result is software that cost amazingly little to develop and is often given away for free as a result.
Recently, a number of user-driven communities have proved that this works for more than software. Wikipedia (while it has its flaws) provides more in-depth articles, a greater number of articles, and more current articles than the old encyclopedias that people used to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for.
When I founded SmartCause, I knew that allowing users to get involved would not only create a more open and transparent review system, but it would allow us to quickly and efficiently review more charities than we could if we tried to do everything in-house.
But where Wikipedia relies on experts, I knew SmartCause would rely mostly on average people who don't know much about charity financials. So we set about creating a system that would walk anyone through the research process, and help them when they got stuck. The result was our SmartForms™ which let users claim a charity from our database of 600,000+ charities, download a tax return, and provide us with the relevant information.
This allows us to publish their findings and offer our analysis quickly and efficiently. With open source as our model, we put our visitors in control of how much information they want. You can see a charity's report card, view the completed SmartForms to see how we reached our decision, or download the tax return to see everything in detail.
To see the finished result, visit the report card page for our first featured charity, Direct Relief International, or search our entire database to claim a charity and make your contribution.
Evan
P.S. Yes, this Web site runs on Linux :)
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