A New Beginning.

It all started in July 2011. After finishing a three-week course at Stanford's summer business EPGY program, I realized that I love entrepreneurship, decided that Stanford was my dream school, and promised myself that I'd build my own company. So I called my best friend Devin, and after a couple months of recruiting and intense work, Benelab Company and Benelab.org were born.

Now, almost two years later, it's May 2013, a week and a half before graduation, and I'm sitting in the same chair in front of the same computer in the same room it all started in. Benelab's been online for 20 straight months, been featured in 22 articles locally, nationally, and internationally, has directed over $5000 to great causes, and I have a thick "Approaching Stanford: Welcome Class of 2017!" packet sitting on my desk. Wow, it truly has been the craziest, most exciting journey of my life.

I can safely say that Benelab has been the biggest obsession I've ever had. I poured so much into it, and the experience poured so much into me; through it I found a genuine passion for social entrepreneurship, and realized that I want to make it my life mission to use technology, especially the Internet, and business innovation to help others. The experience didn't only affect me, either - Devin, Dalton, McKayla, and the rest of the Benelab team have all grown through it, and have left a legacy in our high school. We turned a simple idea on paper to an impactful platform capable of transforming hundreds of people's web searches into donations. In short, we made it.

And as our team moves on to a new, bigger world of college as adults, it's time for our dear baby to move on to a new, bigger stage as well. Today, I'd like to announce that after almost two years of hard work, Benelab Company and Benelab.org are winding down operations in light of a new, bolder life-saving venture - Bene. We're the exact same team, working for the exact same cause of using the Internet to save lives, but this time with a much bigger vision. With Bene, we're taking everything we've learned from Benelab and branching out from just Search to a whole ecosystem of charitable online products - from search to shopping to music.

Although we are not fully incorporated yet, Bene will be established as a Benefit Corporation. The for-profit structure allows us to receive outside investments, which ultimately gives us very high scalability. With private investment funds, we can hire full-time top talent, pursue more aggressive marketing strategies, engineer better products, and create the perfect environment for growth. All in all, we believe that this shift is the right choice, and that we can ultimately reach more lives with a bigger online platform.

So what happens to Benelab? The organization itself will be dissolved, and the Benelab.org website will now redirect to Bene. For you, the user, the experience will only get better, as Bene is built entirely around personal user accounts and funding highly project-based causes. Our Bene search engine is faster and sleeker, and soon you'll be able to generate money from other Bene web apps such as a travel search engine and shopping plugin.

We are thrilled to introduce our new baby to you. Thank you all so much for making our Benelab experience so great, and here's to the future and Bene!

Signing off,
Jack Kim
Founder & CEO - Benelab
5/24/13

P.S. If you have any questions regarding Bene or Benelab, please feel free to reach me at jack@benelab.org. I'd love to tell you all about it.

January/February - International Justice Mission

Hello!

We've updated our January/February cause: to hire a legal prosecutor for a survivor of abuse through the International Justice Mission.

A spokesperson from the IJM came and spoke to our entire school at King's last Friday, and talked about all the cool things they do to seek justice in developing countries. Their solution is to take legal routes to prosecute violent criminals and rapists. The money that we raise this month and February will be going towards paying for trial fees for one case. To find more about the cause, visit IJM's website here.

If you have any more questions, feel free to contact us about anything; we'll be happy to answer them for you.

-the Benelab Team

November Cause Extended

Hi all!

Just a quick reminder - we have decided to extend the November cause to meet our goal of purchasing 5 Dominican Republic birth certificates! Please refer to the last blog post to find out more about the cause.

Thanks!
-Benelab Team

November Cause - Birth Certificates for Ascension!

A legal identity is something we all live with. We take it for granted - I mean, we're simply given a document with our names printed on it when we're born, and that's that. We use it occasionaly when we work with legal stuff, and again, that's that.

But what if we didn't have this little piece of paper?

Well, we technically wouldn't exist. We wouldn't be able to recieve education beyond a certain point, we wouldn't be able to get jobs, and we ultimately wouldn't be able to sustain ourselves.

This is exactly the case if you're a Haitian born in the Dominican Republic. Due to certain events in the past, Haiti and the DR don't really play well together, and DR-born Haitians grow up being hated. They are not given birth certificates when born, and thus in a legal standpoint, they simply do not exist. They can't receive public education beyond 8th grade, and they can't get jobs. As a result, these people live miserable lives, barely able to sustain themselves by scavenging for food and begging on the sidewalks.

So what's the solution? We provide them with money so that they can go and purchase birth certificates from the government. With birth certificates, now they can go out, get jobs, and essentially start new lives. It's a little piece of paper, but it has the power to change a person's life.

Our funds raised from the month of November will go towards purchasing 5 DR birth certificates (each one costs about $40 USD). We will be working with Megan, a long-term missionary working in the little village of Ascension, DR. Her short-term goal for the next couple months is to gather enough money to purchase 30 birth certificates, and we're doing our best to support her and her awesome cause!

More details will come soon; stay tuned :).

Thanks!
Jack Kim, Benelab

A (Very) Important Announcement

Hello!

This is Jack Kim, one of the founders here at Benelab. Today I just wanted to update you all on what's happening at Benelab and announce some exciting future plans.

First, the current situation:
As some of you may have noticed, our ever-increasing monthly donation amounts have been actually decreasing lately. This is because in the recent months, our marketing efforts have been mostly stagnate. The majority (in fact, all but one) of the Benelab team are now seniors in high school, which means - that's right - the lovely college application process has started! As much as we'd like to see Benelab serving hundred of thousands of users and donating tens of thousands of dollars to awesome causes, we feel that we should *probably* get into college. This situation results in Benelab getting minimal attention, but luckily enough we have a very self-sustaining platform. As soon as December is over though, oh boy, expect to see huge strides in user count and donation amounts!

Second, the future of Benelab
As soon as we seniors are released from the wretched grasp of college applications, the Benelab team will operate on full throttle. As the CEO of the company I am setting big goals for the coming year, and I will do everything I can to make them happen:

1) Undergo a MAJOR website redesign and re-infrastructure (first thing we'll do)
2) Double the existing user base
3) Launch new products to operate alongside the extant Benelab Search
4) Surpass a total donation amount of $10,000 to various causes
5) Gain at least 3 more national press coverages

So there you have it - a very important public announcement regarding the current happening at Benelab and our future plans! Thanks a lot for being a part of our community!

Sincerely,
Jack Kim
Founder & CEO - Benelab
11/6/12

September & October Donations Coming Soon!

Hi all,

A quick update on the status of our September and October donations!

As usual, we have to wait for Yahoo's payment before sending off any checks to monthly organizations. Though we not have an exact estimated day, we do know that the payment is coming very soon. So hold on tight! We'll post the checks on our lovely donations page as soon as we receive the moola from the folks at Yahoo. Thanks!

New October Cause - Finally!



Hello everyone!

It's already been 13 days since October started, and we're just announcing the cause of the month!
We will be raising $200 to donate flocks of geese to Heifer International! We chose geese because they're sustainable sources of income for families in need. Heifer's mission is to "work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for the earth," and we thought donating geese would be super cool! To learn more about our gift, visit here.

Another update: I had a personal visit to World Concern recently, and handed them the $400 donation we had raised in July and August. They loved it, and even interviewed me to be in their blog!

Yahoo Payment Received!

 



The Yahoo payment for the past couple month's search revenue has finally come in! We are now able to send checks off to the two most recent monthly causes. Please check the donations page to see the actual checks!

September - Nothing But Nets!

 



It's early September and guess what that means? School started! It also means that Benelab has almost been in a full year in operation! We thank all our supporters for helping us get to where we are now.

The extended cause last month was a success - we were able to reach the $400 goal, and we are just (still) waiting for the payment from Yahoo (we've got word from them that it should be in by late September) to write off a check to World Concern. We will definitely keep you updated on the payment status, and will immediately update the Donations Page as soon as the payment comes in to our bank account. It really sucks having a donation page that has been unupdated for so long, and we're more than ready to send off those new checks ASAP.

For the September cause, we've found this really cool site called NothingButNets.net that provides insectide-treated mosquito bed nets to areas with high risks of Malaria. We thought this would be a great monthly cause, since it only costs $10 to donate a net overseas. Let's try to donate a total of 20 nets for this month!

July Cause extended!

Hi everyone!
In the midst of waiting to get paid from Yahoo, together with the fact that we have been shy of our $400 goal this past month of July, we thought it would make good sense to expend the "send 5 children to school for a full year" over to August. We have extended causes before, and this helps make sure that the cause in hand is fully funded. Our income from Yahoo has recently been on the low side for some unknown reason, and we are trying to find out the solution as soon as possible.

As for an update on the Yahoo payment status, Caleb, our finance manager, just returned from a mission trip overseas and was able to provide the final numbers for the forms. We should be sending those in very soon, and our payment should come in soon too. Once that's in place, we'll finally be able to send our June check to Changes for New Hope!

Important Public Announcement!

Hello all!

Hope you've been having a great July! By now you've probably noticed that our "amount raised" number hasn't been going up very much recently, and we wanted to let you know all about why that is so.
Some of you are aware of the fact that Benelab was founded last summer by two highschool juniors, Devin and I, and that we raised a total of $1500 of startup capital from family and friends. That number, surprisingly, is at around $400 right now.Why is that so? Well, we've been consistantly donating to our monthly causes for the past ~9 months, but we still haven't been paid by Yahoo! This is why you aren't seeing a June donation check to Changes for A New Hope just yet. Don't worry, though, as the payments from Yahoo are going to be on their way to our bank account very soon. We just wanted to let you know of the situation we're in right now!

So hopefully that will clear up some confusion that may have been caused by the missing June donation check. We'll keep you updated once that is finally made - thanks for your patience!

India Today, L'espresso, oh my!

Long time no press, right?
Well, today I was excited to update the press page with two brand new coverages, both international publications! One of our awesome fans Vilas Pavithran told us about us being in India Today, and I randomly stumbled upon the L'espresso article earlier today. The latter one though, is completely in Italian and I have no idea what it is saying about us. All I recognize is "Benelab.org" and "Jack Kim" haha. More press is coming this summer, so stay tuned on the press page!

July Cause - Sending 5 Children to School!

Hello all!

Sorry it's been so long since the last blog post - we at Benelab have been really busy lately with a new project (coming soon...)! We sincerely apologize for the very bad delay in updating the July cause.

Anyways, we think the new cause this month is pretty cool - we're going to raise $400 to send 5 children to school for a full year through our friends at World Concern! The $400 includes everything from tuition, and books to writing materials.

The reason we chose this cause is that we, especially I, believe that education is a huge stepping stone in coming out of poverty and empowering an individual to achieve more; knowledge instills confidence in a person, and confidence leads to opportunities! As fellow students benefitting by education every day, we truly wish our funds will go towards planting firm foundations in the children (now soon to be students) we will be supporting.

For more information on the specific cause we are supporting and the nonprofit organization World Concern, visit http://globalgiftguide.worldconcern.org/category/education/education-package

Thanks!

Problem fixed!

We just got the problem fixed! We have temporarily reverted back to the Bing API until we hear from Yahoo that they have fixed their probelm. Search on!

Experiencing problems with Benelab Search?

Within the past couple days we have been getting reports from some of our users that they are not receiving any search results on Benelab. Yahoo has confirmed that their frame is not working on Internet Explorer 8. We are at this very moment making a temporary patch to fix it. Thanks for your patience!

May Donation - $330!

I just signed off a $330 check to the Ronald McDonald House of Washington! May was a kinda shaky month for Benelab to tell you the truth (The team and I weren't able to spend too much time of it, so we didn't experience much growth...), but I am excited that our funds will go towards purchasing much needed supplies at RMHC!

The charity was first suggested by McKayla, our VP of Marketing (super good worker BTW) and I'm glad we chose them for May!

For now, over and out. :)

June Cause - Providing 20 LED Lamps

Wow, what can I say. These past few days have been overwhelming for me, filled with thousands of tweets about Benelab and my inbox piling up with new opportunities every day. The Mashable article (http://mashable.com/2012/06/01/benelab/) no doubt helped us so much, and it single handedly doubled our user base. AP tests and SATs are over, and with an entire summer break fully dedicated to Benelab work, I am very excited about the future of our venture.

Anyways, with the help of a new partner we established very recently, Benelab has finally decided on our June cause: we will be raising $400 to purchase and send 20 hand-powered LED lanterns to Peru. The lanterns will allow middle-school students who have no access to electricity to study even after the sun sets! The lanterns will be delivered to Peru via Changes for New Hope (http://www.changesfornewhope.org/), a nonprofit organization that focuses on educating children in the Peruvian Andies. It is a completely volunteer-run foundation just like Benelab!

Another very recent partner that we are excited to announce is GivingSomeThing.com(http://www.givingsomething.com/). It is a platform that allows anyone to 'shop' for an organization s/he supports. Once a charity is listed on GST, it releases a wish-list of products that they need to continue their work. Then it is up to the users to buy the items! Essentially, GST makes donating way more tangible than writing a check. And for this month of June, Benelab will be purchasing and donating the LED lanterns through GivingSomeThing.com!

April Donation - $340

AP Tests are over!!
Okay, now that those are done with, we have a bit more time to work on Benelab. Thanks to your help, we were able to decide on the May cause in the midst of all the craze within the first week of May. We are donating to the Ronald McDonald House to help provide a "home away from home" for cancer patients and their families.

So back to the point - we just wrote the check for $340 to World Concern, which was the chosen charity for March and April. The funds will go towards providing hearing aids to 4 children in developing countries! You can check out our updated donations page here.

Help us decide the May Cause!

Hey everyone!

I'm sure you all are aware of the fact that Benelab is entirely comprised of highschool students, mostly juniors. And the month of May is the "nightmare month" for all juniors who are taking AP exams. Why are we telling you this? It's because 'tis the lovely AP season right now, and our main members at Benelab HQ are spending countless hours studying for these very important tests, not leaving that much time for Benelab work. We know, it's the last thing we want to do, but we also believe that going to a good college will help us help more people in the future!

Anyways, we have been super super busy for the past few weeks and will continue to be for the next couple weeks. We will of course keep up work on Benelab, but the workload will be a bit less till theis lovely AP season is over. We ask for your patience and understanding!

So... back to the main purpose of this post! Because we have been so busy, we have not been able to decide on the May cause of the month yet - and we need your help deciding, fast. So please pitch in any suggestions to us, so that we can expedite the process a lot. You can directly email Jack at
jack@benelab.org

Or, if you're feeling a bit busy today like us, save a few seconds and just comment on this post right below!

Thanks so much for your support everyone!
-Jack & the very busy Benelab team

Hydrave Results - Good News!

Wow! Sorry it's been such a long time since we last updated our blog! We juniors are getting pounded with AP tests lately and we just barely have time to do anything else...

Anyways, we have some updates! More specifically, we got the numbers back for how much we raised at the Hydrave dance a couple weeks ago. An astounding $870!

But that's not all... World Concern, the organization we will be working with to drill the well, provided matching funds, so the total money raised is $1740!

We're super excited about the results of Hydrave. It's quite amazing how that much money was raised in a mere 2 hours. It also showcases Benelab's approach to philanthropy very well - to bring it to the norm and make it cool. We always like to innovate new, effective ways to raise money to donate to meaningful causes that we can easily relate to. We are happy Hydrave turned out super well!