Lilac

Home Page
Donation Page
Profile Page (pets and thank-you messages shown here)
Account page

Inspiration

We have seen the wealth disparity within and between countries, and we have seen how charities try to remedy this problem. However, it is not easy for people to donate without assurance that their donation will help. Thus, we sought to create a website that shows donors messages from those that their donations have helped. This would encourage more donations and reduce wealth inequality.

What it does

Lilac is a non-profit website that offers a centralized location for users to find charities and donate to causes they care about. It allows members to find what they are looking for without having to iterate through countless tedious google searches. The site also shows the impacts users made by displaying personal thank-you messages from the charities they donated to. Our project aims to reduce the wealth inequality within and between countries by encouraging donations.

So why the Lilac? We chose this plant as the symbol for our site as it is a key plant in providing for the animals of a garden ecosystem. Lilacs draw in a diverse group of creatures and provide sustenance. This relates to the goal of our site perfectly, which is to reach and care for as many as possible.

How we built it

We built the front-end using nothing but HTML and CSS. The database management and user authentication features were handled using Firebase. Charities are queried using the Charity Navigator API.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we ran into was using a back end. None of us had any prior experience and so we had to learn Firebase in an extremely short timeframe. Another challenge was coming up with an initial idea as we were constantly switching between concepts. Additionally, we ran into challenges managing the scope of our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As mentioned earlier, we all only had front-end experience prior to this and are proud of our ability to get some data base and sign-in features working.

What we learned

We learned the basics of backend development and just how important it is to manage tasks under such a tight deadline. Going forward we would make a clearer plan earlier to prevent having to back track.

What's next for Lilac

In the future we plan to add more interactivity to the reward system. This would mean the ability to do activities with your virtual pets and customize them with cosmetics. We also hope to refine features that are lacking in the prototype.