Here’s a new site that reckons it has found the secret to helping persuade more people to give money to charities on a regular basis.
Givv.org allows you to pick a bunch of charities… and then each month those on your list will receive the amount you have nominated them to get. Be that $2.11, or $45.26. Each month you can then play with the list, and the donation amounts… so you’re totally in control of the amounts you are giving.
The prickly direct marketer inside me is furious that one of the benefits that Givv.org are promoting is “keeping off a fundraising list”, but setting that aside… I am left wondering “where the heck are the supporters going to get feedback from?”
So I have written to them and asked.
My hopes are that this is a slice of social media heaven as the site does facilitate users sharing on their profiles who they give to and even how much. This in turn is used to create popularity boards which help new users decide who to give to.
I have often joked with friends that people’s attitudes to giving to charity is often a great way for me to judge my compatibility with them. If this site helps people to share this as part of their identity both on this site and on Facebook… then it may start to encourage a system by which people could be persuaded to benchmark their giving levels against one another.
My hope is that charities can integrate this site with their other social media strategies… which should include sharing video stories and pics + text movies of how money is helping the charity beneficiaries. If the site allows charities to post up videos and pics so that supporters and those interested can browse them each month… it could be onto a winner, and charities will be forced to compete on the basis of their stories.
My fear is that the site has been created without an awareness that supporters actually benefit from learning what the charity is doing with the donations provided. If the site has been created purely from the perspective of an angry donor who doesn’t like mail packs…. then it will rely on its users being interested / savvy enough to follow the charity’s facebook page / blog / etc instead of connecting them to the very stories that will keep them giving month after month.
Given that the site says “if you see an advert for Amnesty international on TV you can then add them to your list that month…” I fear that the site creators may not have understood the power of storytelling.
I shall post their reply here!
opinionaid 
Hi Dan!
I’m Jason Pratt, the founder and creator of Givv.org. Thanks for writing about us and thanks for your thoughts and feedback. I have enjoyed getting your perspective on the importance of “storytelling.”
The analogy I use with nonprofit directors is as follows: imagine you’re invited to speak at a luncheon, about your nonprofit. The audience will be full of likely supporters.
Suppose you tell your story, get a standing ovation (complete with tears!) and then when the roar subsides, you say, “Anyone who would like to donate to the cause can fill out a form that’s on the table in the back of the room, or talk to our Donations Coordinator, Jane, and give her your credit card and she’ll take donations and get you on our list.”
Now, you’ll probably get 2-3% response or so, if averages hold, and you’ll definitely raise some money. But in that other 97-98% of people, there are probably many who say, “I liked what I heard, but not enough to fill out a form, or give them my credit card. So I’ll just head on out to my next appointment and wish these guys luck.” The vast majority will be in this category.
But now – suppose you also passed a hat? While the applause is going on, what if you started a hat, into which people could anonymously and quietly drop in a dollar, 20 dollars, or whatever? No names, no forms, no credit cards. You’d definitely get more donations from your talk. Passing the hat works. Its downside is you don’t get to know who donated. The positive is that you give people a way to donate quietly.
Donors on Givv.org are the “pass the hat” group. You don’t want to shut down your online donation pages (of course!) but you do want to offer people another alternative. And the great thing about Givv.org is, once you get onto someone’s list, they keep giving month after month. It’s automatic and easy. It just keeps running. If they raise their giving budget, everyone benefits. I think it’s a great option (of course!) and I built it to solve a problem I myself had. Hopefully others find it useful too.
Trust me, I want to help the nonprofits and givers of the world get together. Givv.org is just another, hopefully unique way to do that.
Any thoughts?
Jason
Thanks for such a quick reply Jason.
I agree that there is a group of supporters that does not wish to have a traditional relationship with a charity whereby they start to receive mail appeals, and phone calls.
You mention that “once you get onto someone’s list they keep giving every month”. To be honest that doesn’t stack up for me UNLESS supporters find a way to keep getting a buzz out of their donation. The buzz is usually created by three sets of recognition:
1) the self- recognition that the money is changing the world in a manner which appeals to the supporter’s view of how the world should be better
2) the acknowledgement of the charity that the money is doing good
3) the reognition by peers that the supporter is a good person.
This is part of the psychology of giving, and it’s based on research. Here’s some words from Adrian Sargeant (prolific and well established fundraising researcher) courtesy of my old mates at Bluefrog.
“Putting aside practical issues such a shortage of cash, previous quantitative research has shown that there are actually three key drivers of loyalty.
•Donor satisfaction with the quality of service provided by the nonprofit.
•How committed a donor feels to the organisation (its mission and values).
•The extent to which the organisation is trusted by its donors to spend its money wisely and act in a manner consistent with its values and deliver on its promises. ”
As I mention in my post… in the absence of videos or text/pics that show progress a supporter is left to their own investigative devices to get the buzzes they usually need. Therefore whilst your supporters appear to be making a committment with a monthly regular payment… you may find over time that their loyalty falls… simply because they weren’t ‘helped’ to find the stories and information that would keep theithe buzz going.
What interests me about your site is how easy you are making it for people to set up many regular payments (and stay in control of those payments)… and I agree that therefore you will be likley to recruit more supporters. You are offering a form of greater donor power and that’s great. BUT I am still concerned that in your assessment of what those donors need you have focused on traditional fundraising relationship techniques. You have therefore blocked off the mail, phone and email channels… but perhaps haven’t recognised that there still needs to be an information flow.
In your email to me you mention that:
“If you have an RSS feed, you can add that to your profile, and it can contain videos, pictures, blog posts, etc., all of which will show up on the profile page for Inspire.”
That IS THE SOLUTION to my fears!
I hope that moving forward you can adjust your perception of the importance of that functionality. Since it will really help charities to keep their Givv.org supporters interested. A static profile will really only be able to make promises. A dynamic one will be able to show the promises being kept.
In time, as your database grows… I think you’ll find that this helps your community establish the means with which to easily judge should they be loyal to a charity or switch… which of course plays neatly into the functionality you have created.
Good luck, and thank you very much for taking the time to reply by email and post a coment here.
Dan.
Great thoughts Dan. I have also been thinking about a way to make a “consolidated” update page that allows each of the nonprofits to give a one-line update or something, that way a user can see at a glance what all the nonprofits are doing with the donations…the key is managing it. This would be an improvement on the current setup on Givv.org. Take a look at Campaign For Liberty on Givv (http://givv.org/r/c4l) and you’ll see a good example of a rich RSS feed…
Having spent some time dwelling on this 🙂 I have come to realize that a donor could conceivably support hundreds or more nonprofits from a single donation. This obviously taxes the human brain’s ability to make connections and remember information. But IF the donor initially supports the mission of a group (i.e. just after he finds out about the group) and IF the donor feels the group is achieving results, AND the donor puts the group onto his/her givvlist, then because it’s (a) likely to be a small part of a bigger donation and (b) likely that the donor is not going to readily change his mind UNLESS he sees some negative information to the contrary, THEN the donation will keep going.