we've been thinking of setting up an online donation site for our troops

[bpilgrim]

In light of all the stories concerning the lack of supplies for our troops in the field a co-worker of mine - webmaster/designer - and I got to talking and we thought it might be a good idea to setup an online donation site folks could contribute to to help buy flak jackets for our troops.

folks can contribute any amount and we would combine the funds to buy flak jackets for our troops and we would send in return a flak jacket sticker for their cars to show that they truly support our troops.

now my friend and i are willing to set up the site, design and tech, but we would need a lot of help with everything else, promotion, logistics, copy writing, printing of stickers, picking the right flak jackets, shipping, etc.

anyways, i told him i might be able to find some help on the best board on the web DU, so here i am... anyone else think this is a good idea and would like to help?

we would need a lot of help and a project leader just to get started. my friend and I are good at the tech side but we are not so good at anything else so any and all help/ideas will be greatly appreciated... beginning with a name for this project =)

thank you for your time and concern.

Sincerely,

peace

[sundancekid]

1. great idea ... how can we help??

[bpilgrim]

3. Excellent Question

First step, i think, would be to just compile a list of volunteers and what they would be willing to do.

Secondly, we need a project leader. Someone who has experience with this sort of thing to make sure we are following best practices and don't fall astray of the law.

Thirdly, brainstorming, which we can start right away.

On the tech side my friend and I can start the ball rolling...

We have a small server and the ecommerce hooks to accept donations online via credit cards but if this thing takes off we would need a new home on a bigger server (linux/unix or os x) with more bandwidth. It would be nice to have that from the start to save migration hassles though.

We would also need help running it once it was set up, a support team to handle sorting and routing of tech issues and folks to answer basic end user questions and issues. We will probably set up a BBS and a mailing list for that.

We would also need someone responsible for the receipts, a treasure i guess to authorize and and manage the allocation of funds for purchasing.

We would need experts to recommend what we should purchase.
(don't wanna wind up with this kinda problem...
Second Chance Body Armor lays off 56 workers
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/10037301.htm )

We would need copy writers to write up our goals and promotions etc.

We could use designers to come up with internet ads to help promote what we are doing not to mention the stickers we will give out. A printer would also be helpful here.

Spokespersons to talk about what we are doing and help explain it to the media.

Business folks could probably help us out here too, to get us the best deals and manage the relation ships with vendors.

Well, that's off the top of my head to get things started but i know i am probably leaving out a lot not to mention details. Though once we get a team together we can get into the details with each appropriate group.

I hope that's not too rambling... we really need a project leader with experience =)

:hi:

peace

[sundancekid]

4. first legal question will be tax status: for profit? or a non profit 501c3

this is KEY in terms of how to represent the notion of "donation" -- if it is simply a private company where the online community actually buys stuff to be "drop-shipped" to a soldier in Iraq that would be easy -- a bit of a reverse e-bay notion where we could make great wholesale deals -- presumably there may be an issue with the actual manufacturing of these flak jackets (in terms of "just in time" delivery) or not??? is money the only kicker????

what do you all think?

[bpilgrim]

6. for expedience sake

I like the idea of a private company.

We could have soldiers sign up to request a jacket, provide their size and shipping info and we would place the order electronically with the manufacture to drop ship it directly to them... well that would be the ideal but i guess we also need to consider wholesale purchases for better rice breaks but that is out of my area of experience but i can see where that would start to get complicated and expensive pretty quick.

as far as the company to use to make these purchases i have no idea. hopefully a DU'er can point us in the right direction for that or help out with research.

I want to be sure that what ever we get that it's top-of-the-line, has a proven history and won't degrade in the heat or sand.

[UL_Approved]

2. Original idea

I have never heard of this proposed anywhere. They have those stupid little "Support our Troops" stickers people put in their windows, but no real support that actually goes to the troops. Our site must promote ideas like this if we are to truly distance ourselves from the right-wing onslaught. Only people who actually give a damn about liberty and peace are willing to pay for it themselves. After all, who wants tax breaks (Republicans, and Christians, oh my).

[bpilgrim]

7. that is exactly why we came up with this idea...

during lunch we were talking about how fake it is to put one of those stickers on your car and wondered how, exactly, was that supporting our troops...

i mentioned the lack of material over there, especially flak-jackets and we asked how hard would it be to set up a program that gave contributors something back for their car to show their support that actually had a tangible meaning in the real world and supporting our troops at the same time.

:hi:

peace

[bpilgrim]

5. FYI: I just registered initial domain names jacketsfortroops.org .net .com

I will work on setting up a small site where we can get organized... I will post a link here when it's ready.

BTW: these domains are just for us to organize we don't necessarily need to use these for the official site when launched... we were also worried about a freeper hijacking our idea.

peace

[UL_Approved]

8. Don't think that will be an issue

Do you think that any of our buddies over at the Free Republic (blasphemy, Plato is crying) really have an interest in donating, say $100 for troop supplies as opposed to $4.99 for one of those "make-me-look-like-a-patriotic-American-without-the-responsibility" stickers? If they can't prostitute out an image of the "All-American boy" or bilk the 80% maximum profit off of the organization, why would they even bother? They had the chance, and they decided on those stupid little adhesive paper ribbon stickers.

However, now that they may be tipped off, it would be nice to register the idea for posterity so as to deter the usual revisionism associated with the crowd of them. If we do this, it represents a huge step forward for our troops.

[Sebum]

9. I'm interested too