KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A new website a Kansas City man plans to launch this coming week will promote crowdfunding to raise money for local nonprofit agencies through even the most modest of donations.
Tim Racer, who pitched his proposal in November during Kansas City Startup Weekend, said the first step will be to amass donors through his new Daily Deeds website before building a list of nonprofits that need funding.
He believes the site will be the first of its kind in the country.
"My goal is to get 10,000 donors to give a dollar a day," he said. "It won't start that way, but we hope to build it. We hope to make giving a part of daily life."
Small nonprofit agencies will fill out a 12-question form on the Daily Deeds website to describe specific needs they need money for and how much they need, The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/1cOwasy) reported.
People who have signed up as donors on the website can contribute money to a fund managed by the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. Racer said ideally he would like to see donors contribute at least $30 a month to the Daily Deeds fund.
"I'm trying to make it easier for younger people to give smaller amounts, to become philanthropists," he said. "I think this is a low-friction way."
A five-member Daily Deeds team will review applications from the nonprofits and pick one each day to add to the website. Each agency will be featured for seven days before being rotated off.
Donors can review the current nonprofit appeals and click a button to steer a donation - as little as $1 and as much as the donor has deposited into the fund - toward their chosen charity.
Crowdfunding sites like indiegogo, gofundme and kickstarter are raising billions of dollars from millions of investors and donors, while sites such as razoo, causes and crowdrise focuse mainly on charitable or civic causes.
Racer believes his site will prompt donors to give more because they will know that the nonprofit agencies on the site have been approved by the community foundation, and that their donations will be tracked so the money is spent as intended.
Racer is associate general counsel at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, but he stressed that Daily Deeds - which has been set up as a limited liability company - is not a Kauffman Foundation project.