Mediacurrent is proud to announce the launch of Wamboo.com, a new Drupal-based Website that helps match donors with individuals and families in need. Wamboo is the brainchild of Cincinnati, Ohio based entrepreneur Dori Gehling. Dori is a successful real estate executive who was looking for a way to give back to her community.
Wamboo is a prime example of how the Web and social networking concepts are being leveraged to help stretched charitable organizations in need of innovative ways to expand their reach. The site works like this: members sign-up and complete a profile on the site; those members then find "rallies" that are raising support for an individual in need. All rallies are sponsored by "champions" that represent official non-profit organizations like a church, fire department, or shelter. When a financial or donation goal is met it is closed, and the champion coordinates with the beneficiary.
When Dori first approached Mediacurrent with the project there were two primary objectives - simplicity and usability. She also wanted a way for members to send payments online, track rallies they were interested in, and for groups to collaborate together.
Drupal was an obvious choice to meet the site’s requirements, while allowing for scalability and growth. The site features a custom theme and a number of Drupal contributed modules like Views, CCK, Flag, and Subuser. In addition, Mediacurrent created a number of custom modules to integrate with PayPal, Yahoo! Geocoding, and to heavily extend the functionality of a user, in terms of how Drupal defines what a user is and does.
Wamboo press release has been picked up by a number of national media outlets that you can read about here: Entrepreneur Magazine Cincinnati Business Courier Yahoo News Press Release
Finally, you can check out a more detailed overview of Wamboo via this Youtube videocast. The goodwill aspect of the project made this a really enjoyable assignment for us to work on. While the site is in beta, Dori is currently looking for organizations to champion rallies. You can also sign-up as a member, and lend financial support to someone in need.