Million Dollar List
Million Dollar List is a record of publicly announced charitable gifts of $1 million or more as recorded and researched by Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Center on Philanthropy needed a comprehensive resource that projected philanthropic gifts of $1 million and more to anyone interested in learning about philanthropy, donating or raising funds.
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Challenge
Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University spent years researching and compiling extensive data projecting charitable gifts of $1 million and up. When gifts were reported, Center on Philanthropy would manually update extensive spreadsheets that would accurately project donations.
They believe that anyone should be able to search to see where donations are coming from, the organizations receiving them, and where additional needs for donations might exist.
They needed a comprehensive online resource that would raise awareness through the transparency of giving and project philanthropic giving of $1 million and more. They also needed a custom web solution that would regularly update and allow anyone to search where donations are coming from, where they are being received and where the need for giving might exist throughout the world.
Solution
With this big vision in functionality, Center on Philanthropy partnered with Smallbox to create Million Dollar List.
SmallBox scaled processes to fit within Center on Philanthropy’s quick 4-week timeline. We leveraged online tools already available that would fit with their needs and vision. but we also needed the user experience to be unique, easy and fun. While the deadline was tight, our quality of work didn’t waiver.
One million dollars is a significant amount of money to donate, and therefore we needed to provide users with the ability to easily discover where they want to give. We implemented a search functionality that allows users to search donations by donor, recipient, location or subsector.
An effective and interactive interface, even one that contains extensive data, shouldn’t require instructions. The content and functionality should do all the work.
Results
In milliondollarlist.org, Center on Philanthropy now has a free, powerful and searchable tool that allows users to easily make decisions, learn about philanthropy and raise their awareness on where needs for substantial donations might exist.
Anyone can visit the site to see who has given, where donations are being received, discover trends in giving and more. The site covers more than 60,000 gifts of $1 million and up in one single database. A visitor can search throughout the entire world for donation information, or segment their list as small as individual donors or recipients.
SmallBox’s content management system allows Center on Philanthropy to be more efficient in their reporting as well. They no longer have to take the time to update extensive spreadsheets. The data regularly updates on the site and is easily exported in as large or small segments as needed.
Together, Center on Philanthropy and SmallBox launched the most comprehensive, free, online public record of gifts of this size.
