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!

HYDRAVE!!!

Last Friday Night, King's ASB and Benelab hosted the Hydrave dance, a rave to raise money to drill a freshwater well through World Concern. Benelab kindled the idea back in September last year, and it finally happened! Our chapel theme at King's HS this year is "hydrate", and the idea was that we would raise money to physically "hydrate" others in need of fresh water. Cool, eh? :)

Even more awesome, we were able to get funding from the school, so that 100% of ticket donations would go directly to the well! It costs around $3000 to drill a well, and World Concern has matching donors for our donation.

Anyways, the dance was awesome (pictures to come)! The event was completely student-run, which was super cool. Even the DJ was a King's student!

Even if we're short on the money collected, we'll go out of our way to make up the rest; all that matters is that this well is drilled. We'll keep updated on Hydrave, so stay tuned!

new Benelab.org - beneDROID

Did you see the big news yesterday? We released a press release stating we are ceasing operation of the current search engine Benelab.org and launching a new site. Here's part of the press release:

4/1/2012 - Edmonds, WA. Benelab announces plans to cease operation and development on its current search engine Benelab.org; private beta for new search engine beneDROID released. Benelab spokesman Jack Kim: "there comes a time when a web startup simply needs to step back and rethink its product. [we have] reached this stage today. beneDROID. Search and Destroy."


And he're a sneek preview of the new beneDROID site we're currently launching in private beta. Tell us 
what you think!

P.S. - happy april fool's!

Update on March's results, April's goal

March was a big month for us, having gone through a complete search function remodel. We're back with a stronger, more profitable search platform powered by Yahoo now, but we are still working out the little kinks to make Benelab.org the single best charity search engine in existance. We also went though a monthly charity change during the month, and which might have confused some users too. With crazy stuff like our remodel and monthly charity confusion, we have been unable to fully meet out goal of $400 in March. So we decided to carry over March's charity and goal into April. Hopefully this month we can finally reach the goal!

Radio Ad Recording!

We finally recorded our Spirit 105.3 radio ad today! It was really cool, we'd never been in a recording studio before! We were handed scripts to read off of, and Mckayla and Devin took turns recording. Once our producer adds the background music, our ads should go live within this weekend in Seattle and Austin, Texas! Thank you CRISTA for everything!

P.S. - Wonderful photos cred goes to Ms. Tonie Duchemin!

New March Cause of the Month

For the past two weeks we have been supporting the KONY 2012 movement to help put a stop child soldiers in Uganda. However, due to the large amount of controversy and opposition to the cause, we have changed our cause to World Concern with a goal of providing 5 children with hearing aids.

We are sorry for any confusion we may have caused, and please don't hesitate to contact us with any comments or concerns! Thanks!

Benelab on Spirit 105.3 FM

A couple weeks ago our VP of Marketing Mckayla and I had a meeting with the Marketing Director at CRISTA, our school's parent organization. CRISTA also happens to own one of the most listened radio stations in the Puget Sound, Spirit 105.3! McKayla thought they could help us out, and set up the meeting, where we showed them our video and introduced the whole idea. They loved it, so much so that they are willing to give us free ad space on the station as well as its sister stations! We got the script for the 30 second voice ad and we'll be recording next Monday, just in time for it to air starting next week!

If you're a resident in Puget Sound tune in to 105.3 to see if you can catch our ads!

Site Update!

Long time no update! But we bring good news: our website is now 80% reduced in size! We have been noticing that our old design wouldn't fit on a lot of the smaller portable devices, so we have reduced the size (all the content is the same).

We will be upgrading our search feature too in the coming weeks so keep posted and email us if anything displays wrong!

1000 searches!

Yesterday marked a pretty important event in Benelab's short history: first 1,000 searches processed in a single day! It was just 4 months ago that we averaged about 150 - 200. We thank our users, and now let's make this number 10,000 in the next 2 months!

BeneDRIVE results!

788 CANS!! 850 POUNDS OF FOOD!!
That's right, that's the result of the BeneDRIVE canned food drive that was held for a week at King's HS (our school), which only has about 600 students. We took the traditional idea of a canned food drive to the next level (Benelabized it), branded it, and it was massively successful! We delivered a total of 788 cans, which weighed 850 pounds, this weekend to the Food Lifeline, a local hunger relief organization. The cans average out to about a dollar each, so we raised roughly $800 in a week! It was a blast working with the school, and we're planning bigger events in the near future.

More Press (The Korea Times!!)

Wow, seems like that one NW Asian Weekly article got passed around quite a bit in the Asian community newspapers! The same article was in KoreanBeacon.com, KoreaBridge.com, and the biggest one, The Korea Times, which was entirely translated into Korean! I think all the credit goes to McKayla Matthews, our VP of Marketing, for setting up the interview with NWAW in the first place. Awesome job McKayla, I give you a 200% raise, from $0 to $0 haha. :)

NW Asian Weekly coverage

Hey! I just learned from a friend that the article on NW Asian Weekly has finally been published! It's a well written article. (I still think the publishment has a funny name haha)
Check out the full article here: http://www.nwasianweekly.com/2012/02/korean-american-teen-gets-online-web-searches-to-do-offline-lifesaving/

Canned food drive - BeneDRIVE!!

BENEDRIVE!!!

 Benelab is holding a canned food drive at King's HS this week, in an attempt to reach 1000 cans! The cans will go to the Shoreline Food Bank, where we will also we volunteering at. How cool would that be, showing up to volunteer with 1000 cans! Well, we're Benelab and we'll do it.

January Donation - $130!

Our third donation so far! The $130 we raised will go towards providing educational microloans to students who want to go to college through Vittana. Vittana is a Seattle-based nonprofit, just like us, and our team visited their office in downtown and talked with them!

Beneinfo 2.0 up and running!

Hey! Our CTO Dalton just finished final testings on our new //beneinfo module! This new update to the past version adds so much more. You can now search any song, and we'll give you a video for it, a description of the song, AND and album cover if we can find it! Plus now the video will expand to a bigger size when you click on the play button. Try it out, it's pretty awesome!

http://benelab.org/search/index.php?q=viva+la+vida

Update 1/25/12!

Long time no post! Sorry we've been a bit lazy in updating.. But what with all the snow here in Seattle last week and finals & SATs this week, we've been pretty loaded with stuff.
But anyways, we're doing great and have a lot to work on the website. We will be redesigning the whole site in a while, and we have a social media campaign we're about to roll out.

We'll keep you updated, and thanks for the support!

A call from YAHOO headquarters!

Hey! guess what? I (Jack) just got a call from Yahoo headquarters in California! The product manager there at Yahoo Search BOSS was curious in what we were doing and called me to see. I was actually in the middle of a DECA conference, where I took 2nd and qualified for state, but I was way more excited that someone from Yahoo noticed us! Haha. Hopefully we can work with them soon to provide you guys with great quality search results and help us get the most donations out of each search. Wish us luck!

Puget Sound Business Journal Coverage!

 

Hey! What's up? A lot's been up with us, especially today! I (Jack) just had an interview with the NW Asian Weekly (..haha :) ) and our featured story on Puget Sound Business Journal went out in circulation today! We were excited about this one because they even sent like a photographer to our office (my house) and had a photoshoot! Haha, we thought it was pretty cool. Here's an online version, but you have to pay to view all of it... More press is coming!

Amazing Kids! of the Month – January 2012 – Jack Kim

Benelab's founder and CEO Jack Kim has been featured as the January Amazing Kid of the Month! It details Jack's story behind Benelab and about the company itself. It's a really well and thoroughly written article, check it out! http://mag.amazing-kids.org/2012/01/04/amazing-kids-of-the-month-january-2012-jack-kim/

Instant Search Suggestions Up!

Christmas and New Years was awesome, hope yours was too! I (Jack) was in Seattle the whole time studying for the SAT and doing intensive Benelab work with whatever time's left haha. And Devin was in Chicago. Ahhh, Christmas breaks are so relaxing... Anyways, Dalton just finished up final testing on the instant search suggestions, and it is now up and running on our homepage! Go check it out!

December donation to Pilgrim Africa sent!

We just wrote off our second check! It's for $80 and it goes to Pilgrim Africa, which was our December charity of the month. Our purely-website-generated donation will go towards providing malaria prevention for people in Uganda!
Oh, and I'm pretty sure our very first donation isn't in this blog! Here, we'll make up for it right now: