DreamBank is a Vancouver start-up that launched just yesterday. Their tagline is "Give dreams, not gifts", suggesting that contributing funds for peoples' dreams is preferable to gift giving. DreamBank allows users to create a "dream" and they'll handle accepting money for it. Dream progress is tracked on their site, with donors credited. The site uses PayPal for funds transfer, but have arranged their own fee structure. Cashing in your "dream" is subject to a 2.5% fee.
To prove they're about more than just holding your money, DreamBank has a charitable element. When creating your dream, you choose one of their charitable partners, such as Doctors Without Borders or Save the Children. DreamBank pools all contributions into a single fund and uses the interest to support the charitable organizations and cover their own costs. DreamBank itself is a private company, despite their use of a .org domain name (not against the rules, and Slashdot does it too).
Users have already created a number of dreams. Miss604 Rebecca Bollwitt dreams of attending Blog World Expo, and Strutta's Danny and Maura are using it to raise money for their honeymoon in lieu of wedding gifts. Radio host Buzz Bishop is raising money to sponsor a run around Easter Island for diabetes. On a different scale, there's also the boy from Squamish who wants a Lego Mindstorms kit for his own educational and creative fun.
DreamBank is not the first of it's concept, but with a clever name, sensible interface, and well-communicated message, it's the best-executed implementation of it I've seen. Congrats to web development partner FCV Technologies on a smooth launch.
Interesting concept, but I'm wondering how long it will be before the regulators start giving them grief.
I don't believe that you can use the word 'Bank' in your brand in Canada unless you're actually a regulated institution that falls under the Bank Act.
There business models also fall into some grey areas of being a deposit-taking financial institution.
And don't get me started about the outrageous leakage in their system caused by fees to Paypal...
First thanks for the post. We’re excited to finally be live!
Steve I appreciate your comments. Someone else raised the same concern ( re our name) awhile back so we had our lawyers check it out. It turns out that in general your observation is right but it depends on what the core business is.
Our core business is the technology platform and service we provide that clicks a bunch of other services together. The money we hold is just an offshoot of our service. ( Like when a store gift card is sold, that money is in the corporate coffers for awhile until the recipient uses the card. It’s essentially the same but instead of keeping the interest for ourselves we give it $ to charities). So we're not really a financial services firm. PayPal looks after that bit.
From our lawyers:
...“ In conclusion, in my opinion you won't need to change your corporate name as you don't fall under the prohibitions/restrictions of the Bank Act.”
Phew! I really didn’t want to have to change our name before we even started.
As for, PayPal, as huge and corporate as they are (and they sure are…), the do have excellent security measures and global awareness (#1 in world) so they really appear to be the best option for everyone, at this stage of the game anyway. We want it to be both safe and easy for people from anywhere to dream and to contribute. It wasn’t our first choice but with a lot of research, it just turned out to make sense. Despite their behemoth status, they have actually tried to make their fee structure work for our model (and customers) and given we are just out of the gate, they are being quite accommodating. Hopefully they will remain that way.
There should be no fee surprises for anyone. We try to make them very obvious http://www.dreambank.org/about_us.php?page=13
Hope that helps. Please keep the comments coming!
Hello,
Great idea! I registered earlier this morning but the activation link didn't work preventing me from testing the service.
Thank
Eugene
Thanks for the nice comments and heads up Eugene. This looks like a bug. It's only happening to some people but clearly not desirable if you can't even sign up!
We'll see what we can do and post when it's fixed( and on our blog).
Thanks for trying out DreamBank, Eugene. We'd like to get in touch with you for a clearer idea of what happened when you tried using the activation link. Could you drop us a line at feedback@dreambank.org, or to me personally at todd@dreambank.org?
Dawn&Todd,
I'll drop a line or two later tonight or tomorrow morning. I'll be heading out now so we'll keep in touch.
Eugene
