Our Blog

Benj and Jessica launched a nonprofit. Follow our journey as we built a 501(c)(3) and a web site, and now usher in an endless stream of worthy charity nominees and monthly grant winners!

Shortcuts: News | Winners | Nominees

Spotlight on nominee The Trevor Project

Nominee The Trevor Project, Saving Young LGBTQ Lives

Next in our series of posts about new Charitocracy nominees, we have nominee The Trevor Project. It was recently nominated by super donor elearoos. So welcome The Trevor Project to our charity of the month club! You can find their web site here.

Firstly, for newcomers: the cause with the most votes each month wins the pot. No matter how much or how little you contribute, each donor at Charitocracy gets one vote. This is where charity meets democracy. So share this post and ask your friends to vote! That's how we spread the word and, as a result, grow the monthly pot. Yay!

About nominee The Trevor Project

Founded in 1998 by the creators of the Academy Award®-winning short film TREVOR, The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13–24.

History & Film

The life-saving, life-affirming work of The Trevor Project springs from the powerful intersection of storytelling on stage and film.

In 1994, producers Peggy Rajski and Randy Stone saw writer/performer James Lecesne bring to life Trevor, a character he created as part of his award-winning one-man show WORD OF MOUTH. Convinced Trevor’s story would make a wonderful short film, Stone and Rajski invited Lecesne to adapt it into a screenplay. Rajski directed the movie and TREVOR went on to win many prestigious awards including the Academy Award® for Best Live Action Short Film.

The Oscar-winning film eventually launched a national movement. When producer Randy Stone secured an airing on HBO with Ellen DeGeneres hosting, director/producer Peggy Rajski discovered there was no real place for young people like Trevor to turn when facing challenges similar to his. She quickly recruited mental health experts and figured out how to build the infrastructure necessary for a nationwide 24-hour crisis line, and writer James Lecesne secured the funds to start it. On the night their funny and moving coming-of-age story premiered on HBO in 1998, these visionary filmmakers launched the Trevor Lifeline, the first national crisis intervention and suicide prevention lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of young people in crisis have reached out to The Trevor Project’s multiple in-person and online life-saving, life-affirming resources: Trevor Lifeline, TrevorChat, TrevorSpace and Trevor Education Workshops.

So visit The Trevor Project's page on Charitocracy to vote for, like, or discuss this cause! And finally, check out the Academy Award-winning short film that inspired this charity:

December 2017 winner International Justice Mission

Charitocracy's 16th check to December winner International Justice Mission for $1515

We have good news about December winner International Justice Mission, right after this quick update...

A second lap around our star

Charitocracy was incorporated on Christmas Day, 2015. I'll never understand how it received its stamp on that day. Maybe a computer woke up Christmas morning, like any other day, with our paperwork waiting in its queue of approved documents to watermark with a date and e-signature of North Carolina's Secretary of State. Anyway, here we are cranking away 2 years later, still trying to make the world a little bit better each month.

You may have noticed in the Dashboard the number of donors decreasing and the pot sizes shrinking a bit. I sure have! We only lost about 7% of donors during the first renewal cycle. That's probably better retention than we could have expected, so thanks to everyone for sticking it out! And extra thanks for the extreme generosity of many of your donation upgrades over the past few months. All of these have been matched dollar for dollar, and you'll see those matches in your Giving Trees. That's what got us, at least briefly, into $1500+ territory. Yay!

Our problem isn't retention, and it's not per-donor contributions. It's the slow growth of new donors. If every donor were able to find another donor who, after a minute long elevator pitch, also thought Charitocracy were a great idea, we'd be going gangbusters. Your Giving Trees would be out of control. So this will be my focus for 2018: anything and everything that makes it easy and fun to share Charitocracy with new prospective donors.

December 2017 winner International Justice Mission

On New Years Eve we voted in our 4th cause of Charitocracy's 2nd year. Congratulations to International Justice Mission and to donors Alistair and Rebecca for nominating it! You have 4 more days to further sweeten the pot with a special one-time donation of any amount, which we'll add straight to the check we write to International Justice Mission next week. You can find their web site here.

Make 10 minutes to watch this video and better appreciate the sort of work IJM is doing to help end slavery around the world, and feel good about your part in our collective $1515+ grant to help with this work!

One small boy. One huge lake. Foli was a slave. Immerse yourself in his story.

Thousands of children between the ages of 6 and 18 live in slavery on Lake Volta, working up to 18 hours a day in the fishing industry. For these young children, the only way out of slavery is to drown or be rescued. Children just like Foli.

Have a great January, don't forget to start writing 2018 on your checks, and log into Charitocracy to update your votes or nominate a new cause!

The Perfect Last Minute Gift

Felicity was a good sport, helping me throw a last minute video together for our last minute gifts! Plan A was to do a Home Alone themed video with Harry, but when that diva bailed on me, Felicity was quick to volunteer in his place. But she wouldn't accept the fact that it could no longer be a Home Alone video. (Only Harry can rock a bathrobe like that.) "Nevertheless, she persisted..." Hence her choice of sweater and hair, which now she regrets. So be it. Can't argue with volunteer talent!

If you need any last minute gifts (in convenient multiple-of-$13 denominations), cute stocking stuffers, or just want to spread Charitocracy to the masses, be our guest! Email with gift codes and PDF foldable gift boxes are sent instantly. Then you choose whether to forward the email to that special someone, or better yet hand deliver it with a kiss! I am Charitocracy. You are Charitocracy. We are all Charitocracy. And the more of us the merrier!

Over the last few days we've been experimenting some more with Facebook ads. I have to be honest, it's not going well. We still have plenty of matching funds on hand, earmarked for growing our donor base. Incentivizing likes, donation increases, and sign-ups by throwing extra $ in the pot is win-win. We get more activity, and the money goes to the causes. Not so much with the ads: they're generating pitifully little activity and all the money goes to Facebook. We'll keep trying, but I'm more and more convinced that the organic approach (meaning: you and your friends and family) is going to be the most cost-effective. And that doesn't necessarily mean slower growth, either, based on our poor ad results to date.

I have more organic growth ideas. Don't take my growth rate disappointment to be any kind of resignation. It's a challenge, and I rise to those! I just need to crack the code of incentivizing the spread of Charitocracy like wildfire. Sorry, probably a bad choice of analogy these days. Better than spreading Charitocracy like a disease, right? There must be some positive way to spread something... Okay: I need to incentivize the spread of Charitocracy like peanut butter. Or frosting. Like peanut butter frosting. Done. But not if you're allergic to peanuts, in which case I recommend almond butter.

Go forth last minute and spread Charitocracy