Adnan Mahmud's inspiration to create a new kind of charity started when he passed a stranger at a cemetery.

He was in Bangladesh visiting his grandfather's grave when he saw a man who clearly didn't have money for his own son's funeral.

The man was carrying his dead son, dressed only in a pair of shorts. He couldn't afford the traditional white cloth used to shroud the dead for a proper Muslim burial.

"There were vendors selling cloth for 50 cents or a dollar," Mahmud said. "I could have helped him, but by the time I came to the realization I was already back home."

MIKE SIEGEL/SEATTLE TIMES

Adnan Mahmud and Nadia Khawaja are founders of Jolkona, a non-profit designed to encourage young philanthropists.

Even a small amount of money can make a huge difference in the life of another person, he thought, but the problem was how to connect them.

"I couldn't have saved his son, but I could have at least helped ease the pain a little bit," he said.

Mahmud, 31, a program manager at Microsoft Research, thought about the many young professionals he knew who want to do some good but don't have the resources of Bill Gates.

"They'll all tell you 'I want to make a difference, but I don't know what I can do,'" he said.

The solution was to create an online space for people to get excited about philanthropy with just a couple hundred dollars a year.

So in 2007 he and his wife, Nadia Khawaja, created the non-profit Jolkona Foundation. Jolkona is a Bengali word meaning "a drop of water."

"Small drops of money can add up and make a ripple of changing the world," said Khawaja, 26. She was drawn to social service after a stint as a volunteer math tutor in South Central Los Angeles during college. "I don't want to just work in the corporate world, not feeling like I'm making a difference when there's so many problems going on."

After six months of testing, their Web site went live this month. Similar to Kiva and Global Giving, it lets people channel funds to specific people and causes. It also gives them new tools for monitoring their impact. Mahmud said he was put off by large conventional charities because it was hard to choose specific programs or know exactly how contributions were used.

"It goes into this black hole," he said. "I don't know what happens to it."

Jolkona's founders are part of a growing number of young people demanding more control of their philanthropy. A generation used to connecting around the world through Facebook now wants a face and a direct connection to someone they're helping.

Donors can pinpoint countries where they want to contribute and choose from five categories: cultural identity, education, empowerment, environment and public health. Projects can be filtered by the amount of dollars needed, going down to as little as $5, and the duration, from less than a month to six years.

"For young professionals, you're so busy it's hard to do research," Khawaja said. "You just get lazy. It's on your list to do, but it just doesn't get done."

"Our goal was to use technology to engage youth and make it as simple as possible to donate," Mahmud said.

The site also offers what it calls "tangible proofs for every gift."
"If you give $50 to buy library books, you'll actually know what books they bought with your donation," Mahmud said.

A person's donations are broken down into charts and graphs that look as detailed as a 401K portfolio, pages that Mahmud calls "a resume of good."

Mahmud opens up his account and sees an update on a project he's been supporting in India, helping a pregnant woman in a Calcutta slum. "Look, on the 20th she had her baby," he said. "Adopting" a mother and her baby costs $235, and donors can follow their progress for three and a half years.

In Afghanistan there's a school for girls, where $40 provides 10 months of educational expenses. Donors can see the name of a girl and "at the end of 10 months you'll see the report card," Mahmud said. For $30 you can buy seeds, tools and training for women farmers in Sudan.

Some non-profits might loathe such micro-management by donors. Mahmud acknowledges that the model isn't for every one. But for small non-profits without budgets for IT departments, it's a way to supplement other funding and reach a new generation of donors. So far they've found 19 partners and 39 projects.

Jolkona has raised $3,000 from 50 friends in six months of testing. The couple has funded the non-profit themselves, with help from volunteers and one paid software developer. Since all donations go to the charities, they created a separate button for donations to offset operating costs.

Mahmud says the next step is to get more people involved, using online tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. A small group of volunteers will be traveling to different countries and blogging about their experiences on the Jolkona site, hoping to inform and inspire others.