Do Good

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  Do Good!

Inspiration

Alexa is amazing at so many things. Yet when I asked Alexa to help me cure cancer, a disease that has affected my family, she was unable to help. I created Do Good with an even broader purpose. I was inspired to create a skill that could help people pursue their altruistic passions by aligning them with highly rated organizations focused on noble causes.

What it does

Do Good searches a database of nearly 2 million charitable organizations to help align you with organizations that are doing good around the causes that you care most about.This skill will search across all charitable organizations in the database and sort them by relevance. In addition, the skill will only report back on organizations that are rated as "Exceptional" or "Good".

How I built it

Do Good is a Node.js skill that leverages the AWS SDK and Charity Navigator API. With access to nearly 2M charities, ratings and information, the Charity Navigator API was the perfect fit for Do Good. In addition, I leverage the Twilio library for providing SMS functionality. This library enables Do Good to deliver a summary of information to the user's mobile device for further exploration after their skill experience.

Challenges I ran into

The toughest challenge in building Do Good was adhering to the "no soliciation" requirement to pass certification. To satisfy this requirement, Do Good reviews the content of each charitable organization before presenting their information to the user. Any summary, link or general information that mentions donations is scrubbed from the list before delivering results.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The most important accomplishment with the development of Do Good is that now millions of people will have access to organizations that can help them do good -- all with a simple voice request. Perhaps the cure for cancer will originate from someone's simple question to Alexa. Maybe someone that is hungry will get a meal tonight. Or a dog stuck in a shelter will find a good home ... The possibilities are endless ...

What I learned

I learned quite a bit about the Amazon Alexa Skill Certification process. Although this was not my first skill submission, I learned that Alexa skills must not solicit donations. This requirement pushed me to build a more intelligent information delivery function for Do Good.

What's next for Do Good

The next version of Do Good will include the ability to filter organizations by location. This capability will enable people to find the highest rated charitable organizations closest to where they live.

Built With

• alexa
• aws-sdk
• node.js