Charity Fundraising 2.0 at GIVE.sg

GIVE.sg is a social enterprise that places itself in between individuals and charities, attempting to create a better bridge that allows individuals to contribute to charitable causes easily over the web and at the same time, making it easier for charities to reach people by receiving donations on behalf of these charities.

Somewhat similar to the Causes application on Facebook, GIVE.sg allows anyone to create a page for a cause and use social media tools to bring greater awareness to that cause. One good thing about GIVE.sg is that because it focuses on local charities, those in Singapore might be more compelled to donate. There is a positive psychological slant to having their monies channeled into charities with physical presences that can be verified with a half hour drive.

With a double bottom line of affecting social change and being financially sustainable, GIVE.sg takes a small cut from all donations (5% transaction fee). Apart from this 5% fee, there are no other subscription or registration charges for charities. So charities can be assured that they will only need to pay GIVE.sg when they actually get donations.

Compared to spending huge amount of time and financial resources holding a physical fundraising event, which according to GIVE.sg, typically incurs administrative costs of between 15-20% of donations raised, GIVE.sg will be a cost-effective channel to raise funds that they can add to their current means.

Consolidating charities and allowing individuals to use a single platform to browse and contribute to causes and charities they can identify with is a great way to encourage more people to give. Charities should jump onto this platform to gain more awareness. But, this not yet fundraising 2.0.

What is fundraising 2.0 is using people to fundraise for these charities with social media. We’ve seen the aforementioned Causes application do that, now, GIVE.sg is doing the same for local charities but with presumably more social media tools since it’s not contained to within a social network. So while this concept is nothing new, the site brings this concept into the philanthropy space in Singapore.

GIVE.sg will be launching in Nov and are still working on the platform. They have already been working with 20 charities who have helped the team fine-tune the platform. These 20 or so charities are GIVE.sg’s first partners and they include Realm of Tranquility, AWWA, Club Rainbow, Assissi Hospice, Mercy Relief, Special Olympics Singapore, Action for Aids, Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association and others.

Now, their first major cause is to “Support the Taiwan Victims” where they are trying to bring clean water to victims of Typhoon Morakot. Their sponsors have set them a mission: Get 10,000 fans on Facebook before the 1st of October and New Taiwan $100,000 (approximately SGD 4.4k) will be donated to the disaster relief efforts in Taiwan. Do become a fan to help the victims.

Featured image of this piece is courtesy of dionhinchcliffe.