Left incontinent by their ordeal, often abandoned by their husbands and ostricized by their communities, fistula women can lead hopeless lives if they don't find help. One determined woman has devoted her life to treating the fistula women of Ethiopia. When I first met Dr. Catherine Hamlin, founder of the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, I was struck by her humility and humanity. Our meeting took place shortly after I became involved in the Fistula Foundation, a U.S. non-profit that helps support the hospital.

I devoted the better part of the following two years to setting up the foundation's donor relations program. I developed the collateral and website, set up links to online donation systems at Network for Good and PayPal, started a quarterly newsletter and launched the "Love a Sister" promotion to encourage monthly donations in amounts that support one woman's surgery per year.

MIRACLES HAPPEN

Once these programs were in place, Nicolas Kristoff of the New York Times published an article about the hospital and named the foundation's website as the contact. Several months later, Dr. Hamlin appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and, rather than telling her audience to check her website for details, Oprah had the foundation's web address put up on-camera.

The foundation raised over $2 million as a result of these two events — a significant portion of it online — and currently reaches over 9,000 online donors. I began devoting more time to helping other non-profits improve their online presence and enhance their fundraising activities.

Among them is Chabad of Greater South Bay. Executive Director Rabbi Yosef Levin was facing a serious shortfall in his budget, much of which is channeled to ongoing social services. Working with a consultant, he devised a program to establish partnerships between the organization and its major donors. He called on me to support his efforts with a PowerPoint presentation. I developed the PowerPoint, and helped him find a laptop on which to present it. He raised over $200 thousand within four months.

During my work for the Fistula Foundation, I took a course in Flash programming at a local community college. I loved it, and while I'm not exactly a professional Flash programmer yet, I often throw a Flash movie into non-profit websites for the fun of it. In 2007, I used Flash technology to produce the campaign video for Mesa United Way in Mesa, Arizona.

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