Local high school entrepreneur raises funds for charities through the well known pop-up ad medium.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
In senior year in high school, most students are content to fill their free hours with updating their MySpace page or catching some waves.
Not Alex Stern.
Last summer, he set out to save the world, one philanthropic acolyte at a time.
A senior at Malibu High and the son of City Councilmember Andy Stern, Alex, 17, recently launched a self-designed Web site that allows anyone with a computer to donate hard cash to worthy international charities on a daily basis, without ever taking out their wallets.
“I was thinking about how television was invented and able to reach so many people because of the advertisers that sponsored the programs,” the younger Stern said. “I thought that if advertisers could pay for TV programming, they could pay for charitable donations as well.”
Thus was born www.thedonationsite.com and its function is so seamless, its purpose so obvious, that you wonder why it hasn’t been done before.
“Actually, it sort of has been done before,” Stern said. “When you go to MySpace or YouTube or any other file-sharing Web site, they all have pop-up ads.” (The same pop-up ads generating revenue that have fueled an explosion of Web traffic in the past few years.)
Stern’s pathway to pop-ups, however, generates funds for established philanthropic causes, without requiring the page viewer to do anything other than look at it briefly. With pop-up ads generating more than $2 billion in yearly revenue in the U.S. alone, the potential for genuine philanthropic support is serious.
Here’s how it works: a volunteer interested in participating in the program goes to the Web site and downloads software to his or her hard drive (which can be uninstalled at any time). The person indicates what time of day they wish to receive one daily pop-up ad. Every day, at the designated hour, a different pop-up appears on the person’s desktop, which the volunteer can choose to read or not, click it closed and go on with his or her day.
“Your daily commitment to this charitable donation is about 5 seconds,” Stern said, stressing that the advertising generated is limited to one daily viewing.
A self-taught Web designer and software writer, Stern spent the past few months writing the computer language for The Donation Site as a program to work on PCs or Macs with virtually zero effort on behalf of the participant.
“It’s an automatic program,” Stern said, “and the charities get all of the revenue generated from the advertising pop-ups.”
When asked what he is realizing from all this effort, Stern laughed. “Actually, I’m losing money,” he said. “I pay for the domain site and the Web maintenance and I’ve had to turn down Web designing jobs for other people since I’m so busy with this.”
Concerns about possible invitations to abuse or viruses are immediately put to rest. “I spent a huge amount of time teaching myself cryptographic systems so this site is as secure as it’s gonna get,” Stern said. “You would have to access my 40-character password and a floppy disc with all the specifics. It just isn’t crackable.”
He also makes sure that all advertisers are legitimate. “I screen them all myself to make sure they are appropriate,” he said. “I look for advertisers from a list of 10,000 ‘opt-in’ philanthropy leads.”
Stern said he hopes to spread the wealth with his site. “I thought about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and how they really go after the low-hanging fruit of philanthropy,” he said. “So, the charities The Donation Site gives to are broad, needs-based organizations that really do good.”
These sites include Children International, a humanitarian organization that allows donors to sponsor poor children in Third World countries; Heifer International, a project that provides gifts of reproducing livestock to hungry families; The Humane Society, the U.S. animal advocacy group; the World Land Trust, an international conservation organization that saves rainforests and other biologically important lands; and the Michoacan Reforestation Fund, which supports preservation of breeding sites for the Monarch butterfly and creates carbon sinks by planting trees.
Stern was encouraged in his endeavors by teachers and advisors. Miriam Ojeda teaches Spanish at Malibu High and is unreserved in her praise for her student.
“Unlike a lot of teenagers, Alex thinks in the ‘we’ personal pronoun, not the ‘I’,” she said. “We are so fortunate to have him in our school and our lives.”
Stern approached Ojeda with his idea last September.
“I just said, ‘Whatever support you need in this, I’m here to help,'” Ojeda said. “Alex has a very sophisticated philosophical stance for our time.”
Ojeda is offering her students 100 extra credit points for anyone who registers with The Donation Site.
Andy Meyer, Stern’s history teacher and student council advisor, is similarly admiring.
“Alex has no reason to do this other than to do good,” he said.
Stern is enthusiastic about the viral marketing aspect of his venture.
“I’m hoping there are Internet communities out there receptive to ‘team’ aspects of this project,” he said. “Teachers could offer homework passes to students who prove that they have registered as volunteers with this site or school clubs could have interdistrict contests to see how many volunteers they could find to sign up on the site and raise the most money.”
Stern is also looking to partner with other philanthropic groups or organizations that can use the template to hype their own products while generating donations to charity.
“I’ve partnered with Google so that the search engine on my site benefits Heifer International,” he explained. “If you register on my site and need a search engine, Google donates to Heifer each time you search for something.”
Stern’s father, Andy Stern, sounds proud when assessing his son’s accomplishment.
“Alex goes his own way. He always has,” the elder Stern said. “We are so proud and thrilled with him because he worked many, many hours on this project.”
Young Stern is looking to apply to California universities next year.
“I want to stay in California,” he said. “I’ve always lived here and I love it.”
He’s not sure, however, what he wants to study. “Maybe economics,” he said.
His father, however, is unequivocal: “Alex is going to be a very successful entrepreneur, no matter what he goes into.”
More information about The Donation Site can be found at www.thedonationsite.com