As I mentioned in last week’s post about empowering people to bring about social change, this week’s piece is a spotlight on givabit, an upcoming free iPhone app that allows people donate to charities directly from their cell phones. It makes giving quick and easy, and you can do it from the comfort of your couch to the top of Mt. Whitney, as long as you have your phone (and service).
Here’s the gist of it: Each day you open it you’ll be introduced to a new featured charity. After reading a bit more about what they do you can press a button and donate $1, $5, $10 or “Other.” It may not seem like a lot of money, but that’s the point. A lot of people donating just a little bit can make a big difference.
Jake Stolarski and Justin Kazmark, co-creators of givabit, sat down for brunch one day to talk about potential iPhone apps and ended up discussing the presidential campaign. Having seen the immense success of President Obama’s grassroots fundraising, they realized there is a huge opportunity to lever the power of many small donations through new media and technology.
The goal is to make people familiar and comfortable with philanthropy by making it easy and convenient, without a burdensome cost. With millions of people using the iPhone, if you get enough people on the givabit bandwagon, all of the sudden, small dollars have a huge impact. And there’s more. Kazmark says,“[W]e’re also an editorial platform that shares worthy and sometimes lesser known nonprofits with people that might not have become familiar with them otherwise.”
Help the user find causes, help the nonprofit find some funding. And 100 percent of the donation goes straight to the charity of your choice. Seems like a win-win situation. But here’s the catch—they need your help. Kazmark and Stolarski are bootstrapping this venture out of their own pockets, in addition to fundraising. They’ve posted their project on Kickstarter, a site that lets anyone donate to ideas they love, giving people the power to help bring them to life. So moral of the story? If this sounds like something you’d like, give them a helping hand.
Down the road there is talk of expanding the app to other platforms such as Blackberry, but for now, givabit will be an iPhone exclusive. Keep your eyes peeled, it will be hitting iTunes beginning of July.
CATEGORIES: Culture, Education, Uncategorized
Related Posts:
Stay Informed with TakePart:
Get Blog Updates:
Blogroll
- AlterNet
- Amnesty International Livewire
- b-listed
- Boing Boing
- Brave New Films
- CauseCast
- Changents
- Climate Crisis
- Democracy Now!
- Ecorazzi
- EdNews
- Environmental News Network
- Ethicurean
- GOOD
- Grist
- Harvard World Health News
- Huffington Post
- Human Rights Watch
- Inhabitat
- Meatless Monday
- Media Matters
- NewsTrust
- NRDC Switchboard
- Rock The Vote
- SEED Magazine
- SocialVibe
- Sustainablog
- TechPresident
- The Daily Dish
- The Democracy Center
- Think Progress
- TreeHugger
- Truthout
- Why Tuesday?
- Worldchanging
Great idea for grassroots fundraising! One concern: How does a non-profit become one of the featured charities? Who is on the deciding committee, and what parameters are used for evaluation? Seems like a it could open the door for favoritism and other legal quandaries. What if a charity turns out to have board members who are being overpaid? Or a staff member who gets accused of diverting funds? Is Apple responsible for touting the non-profit to millions of users? Maybe they should develop an ancillary application that allows iPhone users to submit the names of their favorite charities. Or, better yet, how about making a convenient and easy application that allows iPhone users to individually fundraise for their own favorite charities? Now, that could revolutionize the world of philanthropy.
An interesting application of technology for sure — but just a tool, a widget, a facilitator. Its like WOOT! for charities. Of course, there are tons of these tools out there to facilitate giving and nonprofit organizations don’t have any idea how to take advantage of them, what ongoing communications and support are needed for donors to want to invest. I hope the developers understand the challenges that nonprofit organizations face and commit themselves to helping those groups improve their efforts, use the tool effectively, and the like. Experience would suggest that the developers, no doubt very smart and very creative - they did come up with a great app here - are missing that key element from their operation. I hope I’m wrong. Or, I hope they’ll add that element to their operation. If they don’t, they’ll be just another app, just another widget, tool, or facilitator, and they won’t have the game-changing impact that they potentially could.
And now I see that there is a company in Scottsdale, AZ called MCJC Ventures, LLC that is providing an existing “texting” platform to get a daily message out to a charity or church’s donors or members. I called the company and asked them about it, they gladly sent me some information on it. I asked them if they have any charities using their texting platform and they told me Creflo Dollar Ministries and Jamal Bryant Ministries as well as the Southwest PGA, also located in Scottsdale, AZ have been using it for some time now. They charge each donor or “subscriber” as he put it $4.99/mo. to get a daily custom text message directly from the charity and the charity gets a good portion of that. Anyone else know about this?
Carla