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Bono: social media where nonprofits are the influencers. Scroll guilt free, give in two taps with PayPal, and sponsors match it.
Inspiration
I built Bono, a social network where nonprofits are the influencers. You might discover a cause over lunch and still be following it months later, when the people behind it share what their supporters made possible.
I've volunteered with the Ukrainian Association of Washington State for several years and I've seen how much work it takes to reach people who would gladly give, volunteer, or tell a friend if they knew about a cause. I also know how easy it is to pick up my phone out of habit, let a few minutes of scrolling turn into hours, and put it down wishing I’d spent that time more meaningfully.
When I came across this hackathon, I wondered, What if the scroll itself could help? On Bono, a view, a like, a comment, a follow, or a donation can help a story you paused on show up in someone else's feed.
What it does
Open Bono and you might meet Rex, a Seattle rescue dog who needs surgery. You give $25 in two taps with PayPal, straight to the rescue. A dollar-for-dollar sponsor match through PayPal Payouts brings it to $50. Later, the rescue shares the update you've been waiting for. Rex got adopted.
The feed learns from what you follow and what makes you pause. You can see why a post was recommended, read it in translation, and search in your own words.
Bono checks each U.S. nonprofit's EIN against IRS records and requires at least six months of tax-exempt status. The nonprofit pays a verification fee from the PayPal account it will use to receive donations. Search any nonprofit on Bono and see at a glance whether it's verified.
AG Grid dashboards show nonprofits what they raised and what sponsors added. Sponsors can ask the dashboard, "Where did my matches go?"
How I built it
I built Bono solo in five weeks with Claude Code as my coding partner. I used Next.js 16, TypeScript, Postgres with pgvector, Auth.js, and Tailwind. Render hosts the app and database.
I used APIMatic's PayPal Context Plugin to build the Orders v2 and Payouts integrations against the API contracts. A local embedding model powers search and helps rank the feed. Claude Haiku translates posts, explains recommendations, and powers the dashboard agent in AG Studio.
Challenges I ran into
PayPal can report the same capture in both its response and a webhook. I check amounts on the server, verify webhook signatures, and make both paths safe to retry so one gift can trigger at most one match.
The IRS check and PayPal verification payment had to fit into one signup flow a nonprofit could complete on its own. To run a media-heavy feed on Render's smallest plans, I compressed reels for phones and streamed media from Postgres. Caching and daily limits kept AI costs down.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
My favorite moment is watching a gift and its sponsor match move the goal bar while the story is still on screen. The Giving Pulse shows what people are helping fund across Bono as gifts come in.
What I learned
I learned that a donation flow earns trust after someone taps Donate. The app has to show what's happening when a payment takes time or fails. A handful of signals was enough to make the feed feel personal and explain why a post was there. I got the best results from Claude Code when I gave it a clear product goal and the actual API contract.
What's next for Bono
Bono's next step is to go global. Bono already translates posts on tap and searches by meaning, so a nonprofit can share its story once, in its own language, and be read across borders. Next: nonprofit registries beyond the IRS, so a charity anywhere PayPal works, in more than 200 markets, can be verified and funded directly. If there's PayPal, there's Bono.
Happy mindful scrolling!
Built With
- ag-grid
- ag-studio
- anthropic-api
- apimatic
- auth.js
- claude
- claude-code
- drizzle-orm
- nextjs
- paypal
- paypal-orders-api
- paypal-payouts-api
- paypal-webhooks
- pgvector
- playwright
- postgresql
- react
- render
- sharp
- tailwindcss
- transformers.js
- typescript
