I thought it would be a good time to shoot folks an update on the progress of One Day's Wages. We've had our share of supporters, fans, early adopters, critics, skeptics, and haters. All – with the exception of haters – are important. But first, I've been meaning to share this cool article about our vision and organization from KoreAm Magazine.
Some updates:
1. WEBSITE. We were supposed to release our “soft beta” site yesterday but ran into some glitches and corrupted files this past weekend and pushed it back to this Friday. We've got lots of work to do but it should give folks an idea how we intend to use our website to leverage stories, relationships, and social media to stir our vision to be a grassroots movement to fight extreme global poverty. (Here's a glimpse of the website to the left…)
For the time being, we're only releasing the site to those that have signed up for our newsletter. We'll be asking these folks to spend the next two weeks doing some User Interface test and help us detect bugs and such. If you'd like to take a peek at the site and help us with this, sign up for the newsletter here.
Our plan is to open up the site to my blog readers and Twitter followers by August 1 and then do a full launch by September 15. Gulp.
2. INVESTMENTS. Our goal is to raise $150,000 by mid September. This has been a difficult economic season for so many folks so we're actually pretty encouraged at our progress so far. In addition to about $5200 raised for the “Giving Fund” (100% of these funds go towards projects and organizations), we've raised slightly over $60,000 towards the goal of $150K. If you're interested in making a donation to invest in something we believe will be special, this is the time to do it – for either the Giving or Administrative Fund. All donations made via Amazon Payments (as opposed to Paypal) have zero surcharges and of course, are tax deductible.
3. PEOPLE. We have three people currently on our Board of Directors (including myself) and 5 confirmed on our Advisory Board (and waiting to hear back from couple more). We're also beginning to put together a volunteer description for Global Research Directors (people in developing nations doing research, relationship building, and partner recommendations), and Global Street Team (social media & general ambassadors).
Each of these require people to be an active member of ODW and donate their one day's wages. I'm also asking our Board of Directors to donate and raise a minimum of $20K/year and our Advisory Board to donate and raise a minimum of $2K/year. Not easy commitments…
If you're interested in any of these opportunities or know of some folks that you think might be a good fit, contact me. In the coming weeks, I'll post some opportunities for volunteers, internships, and possibly, one or two job openings.
If you're relatively new to this blog, here's a primer on all things One Day's Wages.
Thanks for dreaming with us.