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Did You Know?

Two alums turn pocket change into donations using an antique mailbox.

Project Mailbox founder Nick Dougherty ENG ‘12 is with his donation box he recycled from an antique dealer. Project Mailbox is a charity for other charities, raising awareness and money for different causes one coin at a time. Each month, we raise money for a charity YOU vote for, alternating between local, national and international causes. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

Project Mailbox cofounder Nick Dougherty (ENG'12) with the donation box he recycled from an antique dealer. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

An old-fashioned red mailbox is parked right outside Louie’s Haircuts on Commonwealth Avenue, near the corner of Cummington Mall. That red box is the outpost of Project Mailbox and brainchild of Nick Dougherty (ENG’12) and Kaylee Dombrowski (CFA’11).

Dougherty and Dombrowski started Project Mailbox in 2011. As fellow BU undergrads, they realized that college students often have financial and time constraints. They wanted to organize a charity that made it easy and inexpensive to help out a worthy cause—just toss in your spare change when you can. Contributors can vote on the project’s website for what charity gets the change each month. So far, Project Mailbox has raised over $6,000 and donated funds to women’s shelters, youth organizations, and, most recently, $1,064.19 to The One Fund Boston. The donations to The One Fund, set up to help victims and families of victims of the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013, represented the most change collected in a single month since the charity launched.

The charity has been so popular, another mailbox recently went up outside of OTTO Pizza on the other end of campus, across from BU’s College of Fine Arts.

For more information or to vote on a charity, visit the Project Mailbox website.

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