San Diego Union-Tribune

Five Questions - Jerry Hall

Jonathan Sidener
November 24, 2003

Jerry Hall is owner of Pacific Beach-based eWebLab, a Web site design firm that builds free sites for nonprofit organizations. The business recently launched ILoveSchools.com, a resource site for teachers.

How does ILoveSchools.com work?
In a nutshell, it's a matchmaker. It brings teachers and donors together. We have 95,000 registered schools. The idea is that teachers can register anything they need: Kleenex, reference materials, a globe, whatever. Then a donor can search the database. If I've got a VCR that I want to donate, I type that in and up pop 150 schools around the country looking for a VCR. We connect the teacher and the donor. We don't handle anything or touch any money.

Where did the idea come from?
There's a similar site serving schools in the five boroughs of New York City. I kept hoping they would expand it. After three years, they hadn't. I thought it could be a nationwide service. I started ILoveSchools.com in part to showcase our talents, but also to show that the Internet can facilitate huge change at a very low cost. We connect donors directly to the schools, so 100 percent goes to the schools. The Internet eliminates the administrative cost.

What are some other nonprofit sites that you've done?
We did DawnFarm.org. It's a site for a drug treatment center in Ann Arbor, Mich. It includes a community forum and classified-ads section. We also did ChildrenOfBreastCancer.org, a scholarship fund for children whose moms have had breast cancer.

For nonprofits, is the Internet best used as a source for fund raising or is it more than that?
I believe that the Internet can be used to grow communities of people. In a drug treatment center, people are passing through; they're not sharing resources, not staying connected to their new life. The Internet can help them reach out to that new community. The Internet can be a vital part of improving the world. It's more a matter of resource sharing than raising money.

What makes a good Web site, appearance or function?
A lot of businesses come to us and say they want a Flash (multimedia) Web site. But a lot of people who are going to come to their site don't want Flash and can't view it. If a site is functional, if it works for you, you'll come back. Appearance is important, but it has to be secondary to functionality. I think we've only discovered the tip of the iceberg for the Internet's functionality. We haven't begun to exploit the possibilities.



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