Sprinkle: Finding a Better Home for the Things We Donate

Description and use

Sprinkle simplifies donating by automatically matching items with nearby organizations using Gemini for grounded research, and presents verified results with source links.

Problem

People have useful items to donate but struggle to find nearby organizations that accept them and meet current needs, with information scattered across many sources.

Outcome

Sprinkle streamlines the donation process by automatically matching donated items with nearby organizations, providing verified results and source links, and reducing donor effort.

Workflow

• 1. User enters location and item description in natural language.
• 2. Gemini‑3.5‑flash‑lite parses input into structured donation items.
• 3. Gemini‑3.7‑flash performs grounded Google Search to find nearby organizations that might accept the items.
• 4. Gemini reads each organization’s public donation pages via Google Search and URL context to extract accepted items, drop‑off details, and current needs.
• 5. Gemini compares parsed items with organization policies and assigns a match score.
• 6. TypeScript applies ranking, verification rules, and caching logic to produce final sorted results.
• 7. UI streams progress via server‑sent events and displays results with verification labels and source links.

Evidence

Sprinkle finds nearby organizations, checks what they accept, looks for current needs, and matches your items with what it finds.

Source

The Worker handles the API, calls Gemini, streams progress back to the UI, and uses Cloudflare KV for caching and rate limiting.

Source

Results are labeled Confirmed, Likely, Call first, or Unknown.

Source