<p>Someone recently gave me the idea of founding a non profit organization for helping students find the college that's right for them. This would involve making a college access website that provides information, entirely free, to prospective applicants, about a variety of colleges. </p>
<p>On this site, i would then raise money to donate to other non profit organization that search for talented and underprivileged youth, and I would donate the money raised to the programs at the school I apply to.</p>
<p>I would then ask for a letter of recommendation from the program and include that in my application.</p>
<p>Your idea seems severely flawed, let me tell you why. If you start a non-profit organization, the question of donating the profits to other organizations does not exist as there is no profit.</p>
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I would then ask for a letter of recommendation from the program and include that in my application.
Right, so is that your primary motivation?</p>
<p>If you really want to do something helpful along these lines, why not do it at your school itself? You can solicit advice to many college-bound students; this would yield better results as you personally know/interact with the prospective students and are more aware of their needs/wants.</p>
<p>It sounds like basically you're looking for a way to enhance your application.
My advice is that if you want to do something related to education, do a good job with an existing organization such as tutoring kids or something similar.</p>
<p>It's a heckuva lot of work and knowledge to start a nonprofit. Takes at least a year to get the paperwork done. It's not something that you do to dress up an application. It's too much time and trouble and also involves other people (e.g. you need to set up a board).</p>
<p>There also are other well established organizations that already are doing well what you're considering. CC is just one example.</p>
<p>Look, if you think this would be an interesting thing to do, then do it. Don't do it to get a college rec, for God's sake. It's not worth the time and effort.</p>
<p>It is possible to have margins on a non-profit business, and that non-profit business can donate those margins to other non-profits. Generally, unless the non-profit is specifically about fund-raising (as is the United Way, for instance), there are very few margins to donate elsewhere.</p>
<p>If you decide to do this, I would suggest doing it on a small scale so you won't be competing with this site and many others. Gather data from GCs in your district, for instance, to help kids compute their chances. Get feedback from grads from your district about the colleges they attend, etc.</p>
<p>In the end, if you think you would ENJOY this, then do it. Otherwise, don't bother.</p>