History
The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami provided the initial inspiration to create a program to do this with a simple checkbox on a single web site which invited customers to add $2.00 for a charity to the purchase of a travel insurance policy. Within a few months this had raised $50,000. Based on this surprise success, Footprints was re-engineered so that people could donate to location-specific, project based initiatives which improved collections still further and provided the donor with a tangible connection to their choice of project.
After the success of project-based donations, the team decided if they really wanted to make a BIG difference, they needed to share their technology with other e-businesses: to build a network of e-businesses across the globe willing to raise a lot more money for tangible charitable projects.
And so it was that an API was developed making the technology available — for free — for e-businesses (Electronic business) to integrate into their web sites. More partners means reaching more customers and raising more money to fund more projects. All from $2 donations.
The Footprints Network has set itself the goal to raise $1 billion by 2018.
Read more about this topic: Footprints Network
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)