Nboon: The Evolution of Fundraising in Korea

Helping others is something ingrained in Korean culture. As citizens of the first country to transform from a recipient of aid to a donor country, Koreans understand the power of making monetary contributions to worthy causes.

This idea manifests itself in several ways in Korea. For instance, around Christmas time students buy stamps called Christmas Seals and the proceeds go to people with chronic illnesses. Personally, I donate to the Red Cross, but the process is complicated. I had to register by sending them a form and they send me monthly bills in the mail now that I have to take to the bank in order to pay.

There has long been a need for an easier system for accepting donations in Korea and now a new website called Nboon offers a solution. Nboon is a social fundraising platform that lets people set specific fundraising goals (ex. Let’s send computers to Africa) and people can donate any amount they would like.

Companies like Samsung and LG Electronics started to encourage online fundraising by using Social media channels but with Nboon anyone can do this, not just big corporations.

Still quite new, Nboon came online in February. The name came from the Korean term for dividing the payments for something among a group of people, represented by the letter n. So if you have one goal divided by n people, you end up with the formula 1/n. In Korean you read this as “n boon.”

Nboon is equal parts high-minded and high-utility. People can use it to raise funds for important charitable goals but they can also use it to pull together funds for a special event, a friends birthday party, a group purchase or even a wedding. You can basically use it for anything (legal) where its attractive to have multiple people band together to lower the cost to one individual.

There aren’t any specific statistics yet of how many people have joined this platform but a quick visit to the page shows that most people have no trouble raising their target amounts. For now the service is only available in Korean but we’ll update you on Facebook and Twitter if we get any new information.