Lake Forest High School graduate creates WorldPennyJar to fund disaster relief efforts

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Updated: October 30, 2011 12:52AM

Reacting to an increase in natural and man-made disasters around the world, a Lake Forest native recently founded WorldPennyJar.

Michael Greene, a 2000 Lake Forest High School graduate and 2004 Lake Forest College graduate, got the idea last year after the earthquake in Haiti and the devastation it caused. He started brainstorming ways to raise money.

“This idea came to me — why not try to find ways in people’s everyday life to make a simple donation?” he said.

Working off the premise of making it a quick, convenient and efficient way to allow people to make small donations during the course of their every-day activity, he created WorldPennyJar.

The WorldPennyJar concept is simple. It will allow consumers to round up the price of their purchases to the nearest dollar, whether it be during the checkout process on a retail website or in a typical retail situation or even on a monthly billing statement.

If a customer agrees to contribute his or her extra change, that money, along with others’ contributions, will make its way to the WorldPennyJar and be donated to selected WorldPennyJar non-profit organizations to help fund disaster relief efforts and other non-disaster humanitarian efforts, including health, education and environment in the United States and around the world, Greene said.

“I think WorldPennyJar would provide a simple, quick way for people — to make a donation in an every-day way,” Greene said.

In its beginning stages, Greene is currently trying to spread the word about the idea and raise funds to launch the business.

Using crowd funding website IndieGoGo, WorldPennyJar launched its campaign at www.indiegogo.com/worldpennyjar.

The goal is to raise $20,000 for incorporation, service marking, creating the technology needed to launch the business and executing the business strategy by getting in touch companies and presenting the concept.

Once created, the plan is for 95 percent of the funds to be donated and five percent to be used for operating the business, though the goal is to increase the 95 percent higher, once the business gets going.

Once funds are in place, Greene can begin pitching the idea to local businesses and corporations, with a plan of focusing on the Chicagoland area to start.

Once off the ground, an advisory board will be created to come up with a selection of non-profit organizations to benefit from WorldPennyJar collections.

“The idea is to have one big source of funds to provide funding to all these different types of causes,” Greene said.

In addition to the use of IndieGoGo, Greene is also using the old standby of sharing his story and idea with friends, family and colleagues to spread the word about WorldPennyJar.

“The goal is to bring as many companies and customers together as possible to fund disaster relief efforts and other non-disaster humanitarian efforts in the United States and around the world,” Greene said.