netexecindia / dollaraday_template

A Ruby on Rails app template to make your own version of Dollar a Day.

Daily Donation Rails Webapp

(open-sourced by Dollar a Day on October 30th, 2015)

Welcome! This is a Rails app that ran Dollar a Day, from October 1st, 2014 until October 30th, 2015.

Here's the gist of it:

• people sign up to donate $1 everyday
• 1 nonprofit featured each day to receive donations
• daily newsletters featuring each nonprofit

Take the idea and do whatever you want! This codebase is here to help you if you want to do a similar thing ($5 a Day, $10 a Month, or even just a daily newsletter).

Details about the App

This is a Rails 4.1 app built on top of a lot of great services & open-source software:

• delayed_job to run async jobs
• capistrano 3 for deployment
• unicorn is included in the Gemfile, but it should be fine with puma, etc
• audited is also included, and comes in handy quite often
• either Network For Good or Stripe for payments (explained below)
• MaxMind GeoIP for subscriber IP lookup
• mailgun for sending emails.

Getting Started

For development environments, just install ruby >=2 and run this:

script/bootstrap_configs

And then fill in the necessary credentials in the generated config/*.yml files.

Then setup your database:

bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate db:seed

Pow as development server and rbenv as a Ruby version manager work great for running the webapp locally.

Payments

This app supports 2 payment methods:

• Stripe

  • flexibility: will let you build cooler features (some ideas we liked were letting donors give more than $1 if they like a day's nonprofit, let a donor cancel a $1 donation if they don't like that day's choice, etc)
  • overhead: you'll need to be a 501c3 to offer tax deductions to US donors, but their dashboard is very useful for that accounting if you are
  • fees: 2.9% * donation amount + $0.30
  • payouts: requires you to setup and handle disbursements

• Network for Good:

  • flexibility: locked down to their credit card API
  • overhead: provides tax deductible receipts to US donors, because they are a 501c3 and a processor.
  • fees: some negotiated percentage * donation amount
  • payouts: NFG takes care of disbursements for you

The donation form is currently tailored for Stripe, so there'd be a little extra work to make it fit Network for Good again.

Emails

The app is built to send emails via Mailgun (over SMTP and their API). Other services could work too, but Mailgun has a useful UI and just works.

Deployment

It should be easy to deploy this with capistrano, after filling out some info in the deploy files. Suggested setup for your servers is:

• unicorn for app server
• nginx for web server / SSL termination
• any old MySQL database
• cron -- the app assumes you have cron running every 15 minutes, like so:

  # m  h dom mon dow command
  */15 * * * * export cd /apps/my_app_name/current; bin/rails runner -e $RAILS_ENV 'Cron.tab' > /tmp/cronout

• job server -- the app uses DelayedJob and provides rake/cap integration to restart it on deploys

Features

• Subscriber-only newsletters
• Donor-only newsletters
• Gifting
• Calendar of upcoming nonprofits
• Donations are batched and executed every 30 days to avoid paying fees for $1 donations.
• Favoriting nonprofits
• Intercom.io integration

Models

NB: the User model is currently reserved for admin use, for which it uses Devise.

Subscriber-only Scenario

SUBSCRIBER
  |
  -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
  -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
  -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
  -> ...

Donor Scenario

DONOR
  |
  -> SUBSCRIBER
    |
    -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
    -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
    -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
    -> ...
  |
  -> CARD
    |
    -> DONATIONS
      |
      -> DONATION-NONPROFIT -> NONPROFIT
      -> DONATION-NONPROFIT -> NONPROFIT
      -> DONATION-NONPROFIT -> NONPROFIT
      -> ...

Gift Scenario

GIFT
  |
  -> GIVER_SUBSCRIBER
  |
  -> DONOR
    |
    -> SUBSCRIBER
      |
      -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
      -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
      -> EMAIL -> NEWSLETTER
      -> ...
    |
    -> CARD
      |
      -> DONATIONS
        |
        -> DONATION-NONPROFIT -> NONPROFIT
        -> DONATION-NONPROFIT -> NONPROFIT
        -> DONATION-NONPROFIT -> NONPROFIT
        -> ...

TODO

• Fill out missing functional tests
• Fill out missing unit tests
• Cleanup auth code in controllers
• A few models could benefit from a state machine: donation, donor, subscriber, &gift.
• Update hashes to 1.9 hash syntax (ie replace hashrockets on symbol keys)
• Auto-create an Email record after we deliver emails, instead of manually doing it each time
• Other TODOs scattered around the app