Rails for Charity

Open Source Web Based Applications for Charities and Charitable Causes

Mission

We believe that we can connect charities and charitable causes across the world to technology and help each other to achieve the social changes that we all want to see. So, we want to build open source web based applications which help in improving the society.


Motive

  1. Incubate, foster, develop, mentor and support web based software projects which could potentially have a social impact.

  2. Fix the social problems that surround us through the use of our skills (Technology) and give something back to the society.

  3. Provide a platform for people to share/pitch their social impacting ideas, get help and be helped for achieving their goals.

  4. Many people work tirelessly to bring about a change they want, but these efforts are localized and individualistic (person or company) with little collaboration and sharing of knowledge & resources. So, we want to provide a single place for all such people to collaborate and grow together faster. In short provide a platform for people who help others.

  5. Make Silicon Valley the starting point for such a unique open source initiative.

Methodology


  1. Anyone who has an idea would pitch.

  2. Members of RailsforCharity will vote on each idea and form teams to work on those ideas.

  3. The code will be open sourced. Friendly competition among the teams.

  4. Build a working version 0.1 in 2 weeks

  5. Deploy on heroku (heroku.com)

  6. Meet again, get feedback & assimilate new members into the picture

  7. Iterate continuously & get Beta out in 2 months.

  8. Spread the word.

  9. Monitor user engagement.

  10. Reshuffle teams...

  11. Keep iterating...

Who can contribute?


Because its not just about technology. Technology will make sure that the system will get build but people from other walks of life will need to take it ahead from there. So, we need Artists, Businessmen, Designers, Developers, Editors, Evangelists, Marketing, Sales, Lawyers, Writers, QA, etc... In short, anyone who can and want to contribute.

How it works?


  • How_it_works_1

    Teams work on open source web applications

    • RFC members work on different open source projects.
    • They collaborate and share ideas, code and help each other out.
    • Friendly competition among the teams.
    • Use agile methodologies.
    • Iterate continuously.
    • Reshuffle teams.

  • How_it_works_2

    Teams deploy, manage, test, market and maintain the web applications

    • All the applications are open sourced and managed and maintained by the community.
    • Members collaboratively build the requirements.
    • Members build the applications.
    • Members test the applications.
    • Conflicts are resolved through a democratic process.
    • Each member is equivalent to a board member having the power of one vote.
    • Members who worked more on a project have a higher say in that project.
    • Members evangelize and market the projects.

  • How_it_works_3

    Uniting charities and technology across the world

    • Share learnings and resources from different projects.
    • Code sharing and reuse. Open sourced, MIT licenced code can be reused by one and all.
    • Connect different charities with similar problems across the world encouraging collaboration and bonhomie, bridging cultural differences and increasing people to people contact. Bring world peace!

Supporters