This past fall we piloted a new service called "Schoolhouse Supplies Online".  The basic idea is to provide an online tool for parents to purchase school supplies for their children.  What makes this tool special is that all of the specifics are handled through an amazing nonprofit here in Portland called Schoolhouse Supplies.

Schoolhouse Supplies is a seven-year old Portland organization providing free school supplies to local area schools.  Teachers visit the free store and "shop" for items they need for their classroom.  The supplies are donated by businesses, or purchased by Schoolhouse Supplies through donated funds.

We used some pretty fun technology to put the online tool together.  We used .NET on the front-end, connecting (via API's) to AuctionPay for credit card authorizations, and then inserting each transaction (also via API's) into Salesforce.com.  Finally, we leveraged WebTrends for our web analytics.

It was a great pilot year (we only provided supplies for one school for the pilot), and we're looking forward to expanding to 10 schools this next year.  I've posted more details on the program and our results on my geeky blog.

-EricB