28 Days, 28 Ideas #6: Tzedakah Box 2.0
Today’s idea comes from Ari Wallach, co-creator of The Great Schlep. Ari has been working at the intersection of business, politics and communications for over 12 years. He is a partner at studioBenZion and was formerly VP of Corporate Development at Seed Media Group, where he was responsible for strategic alliances and business development. He serves on the board of the American Jewish Committee’s ACCESS program and has been a past participant of the Hillel Spitzer Forum, The Bronfman Reboot initiative and The Jewish Week’s “The Conversation.” You can follow Ari on Twitter at @ariw.
Ari’s idea is for the Tzedakah Box 2.0, a digital tzedakah (charity) box that enables individuals to make quick credit card donations to the charity of their choice, and which breathes new life into the Jewish tradition of using tzedakah boxes to make charitable contributions.
I grew up, like most Jews my age, plunking my pocket change at the end of the day into a JNF tzedakah box. In terms of (Jewish) acoustical branding, the sound of coins hitting the bottom of that blue tin box is right up there with the shofar and “Hava Negilah.” But in the age of online and mobile donations, the tzedakah box has become a relic of the past. So how can we update this idea into make it relevant for the 21st century?
- Take an iPhone or an iPod Touch and outfit it with Square, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s new credit card reader for Apple mobile devices.
- Put it in a heavy, hard rubber case styled to look like the classic JNF tzedakah box.
- Have the Square credit card reader recessed on top for horizontal swiping, make the glass screen flush against the surface of the box, hide the home button to prevent users from quitting the donation application, provide key-lock access to the mobile device itself for charging, and add a laptop-style lock to prevent anyone from running off with it.
- Create an application that allows users to select their preferred charity, specify a donation amount, enter their email address, swipe their credit card, and get instantly emailed a receipt for their donation. Device owners can pre-configure their favorite charities for users to choose from. Upon a successful transaction, users will hear the classic sound of coins dropping into a tzedakah box.
Here’s a very rough mockup of the device, with a traditional credit card swiper in place of the Square:
I can see this going in a lobby at a JCC or as you walk into the latest JDub powered concert.
Version 3.0? That one is easy: Text the word “TzedakahJNF” to a shortcode like 181818 to give $18 dollars to any org (eg. - TzedakahRepairTheWorld or TzedakahGreenPeace).
The Jewish Week recently asked “Will mobile giving take off in the Jewish world?”
With Tzedakah Box 2.0 and 3.0 the answer to that question could be an emphatic “Yes!”
This post is part of the series 28 Days, 28 Ideas. Check out yesterday’s idea, “The Idea Accelerator Model”, over at the Jewish Federations of North America. And be sure to check out tomorrow’s idea at Jewschool. You can also visit 28days28ideas.com for the full list of ideas as they progress.
