This is a submission for Weekend Challenge: Generosity Edition
The problem, in one sentence
When you donate $5 to a small charity online, you have no idea what actually happens to it — and you usually never hear back.
Big donation platforms ask you to trust them. OpenPledge flips that around: it's a giving app where you don't have to trust anyone, because you can see everything.
What I built
OpenPledge is a "glass box" for charity. You pick a cause, give any amount, and in that same moment four things happen — each one making your gift more transparent and more human:
- 🪙 Your donation is written onto the Solana blockchain. Think of it as a public receipt that no one can secretly edit or delete. Anyone in the world can look it up.
- 🤖 Google Gemini writes you a personal thank-you note. Not a canned "Thanks for your donation!" — a warm, specific message about the exact cause you supported.
- 🔊 ElevenLabs reads that note out loud in a natural human voice, so you get a real spoken thank-you. (If the voice service is unavailable, the app falls back to your browser's built-in voice so it always speaks.)
- ❄️ Snowflake keeps the big-picture numbers — total raised, gifts by cause, trends over time — and powers a public Impact Dashboard the whole community can see.
There's also a public ledger page: a plain, honest list of every donation with a link to its blockchain record. No login, no sign-up, nothing hidden.
See it working (this is real, not a mock-up)
Here's an actual donation recorded on the Solana blockchain during testing — click it and you'll see the live transaction on the official Solana Explorer:
👉 View the on-chain donation on Solana Explorer
That link is the whole point of the project: your generosity leaves a permanent, public, verifiable trail.
🔗 Live app: open-pledge.vercel.app
💻 Source code: github.com/sanjaysah101/open-pledge
A quick look
Home — "Give small. See everything."
Browse causes
Give, and get an instant receipt
Proof on the blockchain — the same donation, live on Solana Explorer
The three pages
- Give: browse causes and donate. A receipt pops up with your AI thank-you note, a play-voice button, and your blockchain link.
-
Ledger (
/ledger): every gift, listed openly, each linkable to Solana Explorer. -
Impact (
/impact): live totals and charts powered by Snowflake, plus a one-line summary written by Gemini.
Why "generosity" — the causes
I built six example campaigns around the charity themes the International Day of Charity and the challenge highlight, so the demo feels real:
- 💧 Clean water for a school (climate & poverty)
- 👩💻 A neighborhood code lab for girls (equity & inclusion)
- 🚲 A youth-led food-rescue bike brigade (youth leadership)
- 🦾 Free 3D-printed assistive devices (tech-driven giving)
- 🌱 Replanting a wildfire-burnt ridge
- 🧣 Winter survival kits for unhoused neighbors
How I used each sponsor technology
I integrated all four prize technologies, and each one does real work — none are bolted on for show:
| Technology | What it does in OpenPledge |
|---|---|
| Solana | Records every donation on-chain (devnet) with a verifiable signature and explorer link. |
| Google AI / Gemini | Writes each donor's personal thank-you note and the impact-page summary. |
| ElevenLabs | Turns the thank-you note into natural-sounding speech (a "voice receipt"). |
| Snowflake | Stores donations and powers the aggregate analytics on the Impact Dashboard. |
A "Bring Your Own Key" mode lets anyone (including the judges) paste their own API keys in the browser to test the live features — the keys stay on your device and are never stored on the server.
Tech stack
Built with Next.js 16 (React 19), Bun, Tailwind CSS v4, and shadcn/ui on Base UI — scaffolded with create-notils and linted with Biome.
A note on honesty: no real money ever moves — the blockchain entry is a symbolic, public "anchor," not custody of funds. And every integration degrades gracefully: if a key or service isn't available, the app keeps working and clearly tells you which parts are live vs. simulated. That transparency felt exactly right for a project about trust.
What I learned
The biggest takeaway: trust in charity isn't about a bigger promise — it's about a smaller, verifiable receipt. Putting a donation on a public ledger, then wrapping it in a genuinely warm AI thank-you, made a tiny $5 gift feel both accountable and human at the same time.
Thanks to the DEV team for the theme — building in the spirit of generosity was a genuinely lovely way to spend a weekend. 💚
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