Idea to Realization: The Story of Donate-It

Hey everyone! For the last year, I have been working on a non-profit, and I thought it would be cool to post about it on my website.

The basic idea behind Donate-It is to make it easier for everyone to donate their items. I have placed donation boxes around the community in places that are easy to access so that people don't have to go far to make their donations. The idea started in my sophomore year. I was part of a school club holding a soda can drive to promote recycling. I saw peers buying soda cans on eBay to get volunteer hours. This made me question what kind of difference I was making in the community, so I decided to try developing a better way to have an impact. After brainstorming with my parents and friends, I came up with Donate-It.

Now I had an idea, but I still had to realize it. I knew the cheapest way to make the boxes would be wood because it was a lot easier to work with, and I already had quite a bit of experience working with it. I called hardware stores around me to see if any would be willing to donate the materials I needed. I eventually received the materials from my local Lowes and began building the boxes. I also had to reach out to different people to get permission to place our boxes at the various locations. After sorting out all the logistics, we finally had the strong base we needed to start drives. I reached out to my high school Student Council and convinced them to use my boxes for their drive, and man, was it a success. We set a goal of 100 items and achieved over 1,000 items. Not only was it a success for me, it truly showed how our community could rise beyond anyone's expectations. After that, I worked with other organizations to donate thousands of items to homeless shelters and senior homes. After a few months, I decided to improve the system and register it as an official non-profit. One year later, I am writing this after just reaching out to Ace Hardware for paint and painting the boxes. As the school year starts, I plan to hold several drives to make up for the lost time during my junior year. It only grows from here, and I am incredibly excited to see how far I can get Donate-It.

Projects like this have taught me the value of being successful, so I will leave you with this last thought: True success isn't measured by how much money you have; it isn't measured by how many houses or cars you own. It's measured by what you can offer to others and your ability to change lives; it's measured by your ability to make an impact on the world. That is true success.

Check out the Donate-It website! : https://donate-it.org/

Check Donate-It out on Instagram! : https://www.instagram.com/donateit0/

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I plan to use this website to showcase what I like to do / what I am interested in, and I am open to discussing anything I post. I would love to connect with anyone who has something to talk about. If interested in contacting me, click HERE.