Spare Change

Now, you can automate donation to charities specially curated towards your interests.

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Inspiration

When we think donation, we imagine the Salvation Army Santas, the Ronald Mcdonald House Charity Box at the register, and American Red Cross Donation Boxes during environmental catastrophes. If these donation boxes necessitate cash (as they oft do), the opportunity to give is lost.

What it does

Now, you can automate donation to charities specially curated towards your interests. Goal setting and progress visualization make it easy for you to support organizations without going to the bank. We accomplish this in two ways.

The first method is,you give spare change access to your bank account and for ever purchase made, spare change will look at the change, round up to the nearest dollar and place that amount from your account into your spare change account. Once you reach your specified weekly/monthly limit, spare change will take that balance and donate it to the organization you specified either weekly or monthly.

The second method, you specify an weekly/ monthly amount that you wish to donate to charities. At the end of the time period, Spare Change will add the specified balance to your account and donate it on your behalf to the charity of your choice.

How I built it

We chose to build a mobile application on both android and ios. We accomplished this using Facebook's React Native library to create one application that can quickly be deployed on to both platforms seamlessly. One code base, two platforms. We chose mobile because of the size of the app market and also because donation is a personal matter and we wanted to keep the process as personal to the user as we can.

Challenges I ran into

The major challenge we encountered was React Native itself. Of our team of 5 only 2 had experience developing in React which meant we had to pick up the framework on the fly. Learning a new framework/language for a project has its ups and downs, but in the end we believe it was the right technology on which to build the foundation for our application.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Actually having a somewhat functional application on both ios and android. Also now we can say we know React Native an mobile Development.

What I learned

The pros and cons of working in teams. React Native Business planning and strategizing Coffee is one hell of a drug

What's next for spare change

When a user links their Spare Change account to their debit or credit card, the spare change from the transactions is automatically transferred and available for donation. Small steps accumulate, and before their eyes, the user sees their daily purchases transform into integral and necessary funds to support causes they believe in. Based on their interests, users can research and delve deep into charity master list, select their preferences, and donate to one or more on a regular basis. The timing of donation can be customized to best fit individual financial needs, and goals can be set to keep the user on target. The user then sits back, and watches their donation, and their dedication to humanity, grow.

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