Seth Blaustein founded Dollar Donation Club in early 2021 as a solution to the world’s most pressing humanitarian issues. Built on the idea that united, society can drive greater change, Dollar Donation Club has created the concept of collective-giving by providing millions of individuals the opportunity to donate just $1 a month. The organization is positioned to revolutionize philanthropy in the process.

Seth Blaustein, Founder and CEO of Dollar Donation Club

It isn’t news that society today is shaped by some massive challenges. The World Ocean, our largest existing ecosystem, is turning into a global waste bucket. The UN estimates that we have until 2030 to prevent irreversible climate damage. 820,000,000 people still suffer from hunger daily, and 1.4 million people die annually from Tuberculosis - a disease that has a proven solution in the west. 

Thankfully, organizations have arisen around the world with the promise of eradicating such challenges. Through donations, individuals and businesses who are fortunate enough to have the means can help these organizations drive change.

Or at least that’s the idea…

The reality is, once the check has been written, donors rarely know where their money has gone and what it’s contributed to.

This lack of accountability has led to some suspicious behavior in the philanthropic world.

Following the 2005 devastating events of Hurricane Katrina, the FBI estimated that roughly 4,000 websites were created in an attempt to solicit donations from well-intentioned people, with many of these websites posing as the Red Cross and other reputable charities. Many frauds pose as altruistic organizations with no real intentions of supporting the causes that they claim to promote, resulting in a large distrust in non-profit organizations on a national level. 

“When you typically donate you have this vague idea that you are doing something impactful, but you have no way of actually knowing. We call this the black hole of philanthropy,” informed Seth Blaustein, the founder and CEO of Dollar Donation Club.

The Dollar Donation Club solution

Like many, Blaustein was dissatisfied with the traditional process of donating and believed that there was a more effective, traceable, and measurable solution. The entrepreneur recognized that a large barrier to donating was the excessive amount of information donors had to review in order to understand various humanitarian causes and the dying credibility of non-profit organizations, while having little insight into what their donation could accomplish.

By reimagining what the giving experience could be, Blaustein founded Dollar Donation Club in February of 2021 as a platform where accountability and transparency are provided to members. Organizations who want to be listed on the platform must first go through an extensive 6-week vetting process. If they pass this vetting process, they receive an Integrated Impact Score which is a holistic rating on how impactful the organization is. This score is visible to Dollar Donation Club members, and they can use it to help them decide which organization they would like to support. Members, who gain a spot in the club by donating $1 or more a month, can then track the results of their donation, discovering their “return on donation” as shown by the positive impact it has made.

But, can $1 really drive a global impact? 

Blaustein firmly believes that yes, it can. This belief is crafting the world’s first collective billionaire.

“When everyone gives just a little,” Blaustein explained, “it puts no strain on any one person or organization. But as a collective, we can hyper-fund the world's best solutions to our biggest challenges.”

As a lifelong filmmaker, Blaustein has long been inspired by the power stories have to change the world. When a video he created went viral in 2016, garnering nearly a million dollars in donations, the futurist, social entrepreneur, and philanthropist started exploring the potential of micro-donations and how they could create real-world change.

His curiosity led to the creation of Dollar Donation Club, a micro-donation platform unifying all of humanity to crowdfund solutions to the world's most pressing challenges through $1/month donations. By focusing on high-level humanitarian goals broken into four funds (earth, ocean, wildlife, and humanity), Dollar Donation Club is revolutionizing the philanthropic experience, allowing everyday people to play a small but integral role in driving the change they wish to see.

While individuals give $1/month, organizations and wealthy individuals can play their part by giving their version of a micro-donation, which can greatly exceed $1. By democratizing big change, millions of micro-donations collectively working together can be used and applied to “acupuncture points of change” around the globe, creating “solutions that solve the root cause of a problem while simultaneously providing solutions to other existing problems.”

Blaustein’s mission is to challenge the traditional process of giving by uniting everyday people from around the globe and empowering them to join a movement with just $1/ month and change the world. “People feel disempowered because they believe their small donation can’t make a difference” states Blaustein, “the collective philanthropist solves that issue.”

Since the organization's launch, Dollar Donation Club has already established partnerships and campaigns with two innovative and reputable non-profit organizations focused on humanitarian goals, one within the Ocean Fund and another within the Earth Fund. There are multiple organizations currently undergoing the vetting process as Blaustein projects to welcome ten new campaigns to the organization within the next year.

Currently, Dollar Donation Club is working on removing 1,000,000 lbs of plastic from the ocean, breaking the world record for the largest ocean cleanup in history. They hold a long-term vision of directing $1 billion/month by uniting 1 billion people giving $1/month to achieve humanitarian goals around the world.

Although these goals are not an easy feat, they are a testament to the extraordinary global impact that can be achieved when humanity is united.