Our History

To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history
- Alfred Kazin

No one can really pinpoint the seed that started CharityFocus, but we do know that in January 1999, the heyday of the dot-com era, there was a gathering in a living room over pizza. It occurred in Silicon Valley, where greed was in the air, BMWs were being given as signing bonuses, and 18 hour workdays were considered routine. But this meeting was about something very simple -- something so simple that it was radical. It was about giving.

Nipun Mehta invited a dozen of his friends to discuss a unique way to give. It would put their expensive educations and specialized skills to use for small nonprofits and, more importantly, would give them an opportunity to change internally. CharityFocus was born. There was no real agenda; it was all about learning to enjoy the journey, giving selflessly, and loving unconditionally.

In the earliest days CharityFocus concentrated on delivering web solutions for small nonprofits, who found themselves on the far side of a rapidly widening digital divide. As we were quick to learn, compassion is contagious and new volunteers joined by the hundreds. In the midst of the materialist, acquisitive frenzy that marked the turn of the century, a new wellspring of generosity was flowing.

We have come a long way from our first project, which entailed four volunteers making a cold-call to a nonprofit in San Jose and convincing them to let us build them a website. Since then, CharityFocus has completed hundreds of nonprofit projects, comprises of thousands of volunteers, has tens of thousands of members worldwide, has been featured in the media (including press, radio, and a full half-hour show on CNN International television), and has been studied in colleges and business schools.

As we've grown, CharityFocus had challenged and transformed many of the accepted paradigms of volunteerism. Conventional wisdom in the nonprofit sector says that you need one hired staff member to manage every 50 volunteers. This, of course, entails a substantial overhead and requires significant fundraising activities. CharityFocus remains an all-volunteer organization that solicits no financial contributions, either from corporations or private individuals. Our overhead is miniscule.

By staying true to the principles of pure volunteerism, both in program activities and our organizational management, CharityFocus has been able to avoid a common pitfall of successful, growing nonprofits: the need to self-sustain sapping energy from the desire to serve. When money is an issue, what begins with pure intentions is often overshadowed by the challenges of survival. CharityFocus took the road less traveled, keeping the organization fully volunteer-run -- no money to raise, no vested interests, no hidden agendas, no image to uphold. As long as volunteers continue to give their time and talents, the organization will continue to thrive.

By our third anniversary, CharityFocus was garnering prominence and contributing over 25,000 hours per year to small nonprofits. We also made a bit of history in the merger-mad technology sector by being the first dot-org ever to acquire a dot-com. Subsequently, we launched a full-scale revision of our website, which brought our presentation into closer alignment with our philosophy and presented volunteers with sophisticated automated project management tools.

We also began to bring the CharityFocus volunteer experience out of the ether and back to the local level, providing more opportunities for existing volunteers to give of their skills beyond web development and building local chapters.

In early 2003, CharityFocus took over the operations of ProPoor, a news and information portal dedicated to the South Asian development community -- a service that had, until then, employed up to 14 full-time paid staff members. In 2004, CharityFocus began to spread the concept of service in everyday activities by unleashing a contagiously fun game of pay-it-forward tag called Experiments in Anonymous Kindness, which has since reached the likes of Warren Buffet and Dalai Lama. :)

And the number of programs continues to grow. In 2006, we launched an innovate online video portal -- KarmaTube -- and shortly thereafter, we launched the first, gift-economy print magazine: Works & Conversations, that profiles interviews with artists and everyday heroes. And the list keeps growing.

We anticipate 2007 to be another stellar year, as subscribers to our DailyGood service will reach 100,000, our website will attract more than 100 million hits per year, and we will continue to push the envelope in ways that find innovative ways for volunteers to make service an important aspect of their lives.

Stay tuned. The journey is far from over.