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A more flexible and involving approach to charity
For some time I have been thinking about the way individuals and organisations make donations to charities. I believe that at present the processes by which we give choose and donate funds can be much improved by new technology. I have written down the things I think could be done better and a proposed solution.
Areas I would like to see improved:
Flexibility.
Lets say I get a leaflet for a charity through my door or am stopped by a charity fundraiser on the street. I like the aims of the charity and decide to give my £5 a month to the charity and in return receive a letter or an email every month or so telling me where my money is going and how much it is helping. Great.
Now what if next month there is a flood in Bangladesh or perhaps there is an urgent appeal for shelter provisions local homeless as it turns out we are going to have an exceptionally cold winter? I’m sorry, there’s only so much I can afford, I could go through an arduous process of cancelling my present subscription and redirecting my donation, but really, my hands are tied.
Choice.
So I want to donate £5 to charity a month, but as well as flexibility I would like to split my £5 easily between 2 or 3 charities. But I wont want to go through a separate payment process of sending through my account details each and every time for each and every charity.
Information.
I get an update every month or two, but I might want more from my chosen charity. I might want to know regularly about current crises, new charities. I might want to know where groups of people in my community/workplace are giving money to address new issues.
Involvement.
I give my money, and I get a bit of peace of mind, but I don’t really feel involved, and that my money is actually making an impact. And what about beyond money, Don’t my ideas have an impact too? I want to feel that as well as just a vessel for funding I can be a contributor and a resource, and part of a team and movement.
Corporate donations.
Companies give large sums of money to chosen charities and have various schemes by which employees can get involved either through volunteering or donate from their pay packages etc. But I believe they fail to wholeheartedly embrace charity into their culture and miss an opportunity to utilise charity donations to foster motivation, team working and engagement of their own employees
A suggestion
I have some ideas which can either work on their own to cover the above points but I have combined together for conciseness.
A possible combined solution would via a new organisation which acts as middle man between charities and businesses and works with large businesses as a consultancy to outsource their charitable process. For argument sake lets call it ‘Chari-choice’ (terrible name I know). They would work with the business and its employees to chose a number of charities and set up a portal for employees wishing to get involved to have an account where donations could be added or come straight from their payslip . eg ‘Chari-choice – Tesco’ portal. Chari-choice would then update the portal, or leave it to the company to manage and update with information on chosen charities.
Flexibility and choice:
I think a lot of the issues here is with the interface. I know there are websites where once acting as a centralised donation portal can pick from numerous charities to donate (i.e. charitychoice.co.uk or charitygiving.co.uk). However they are not very flexible and do not solve the problems of choice. What I would like to see is a portal where I log on and have an amount in ‘my account’ where as often as I want, and see a list of charities and I can in tick the boxes of the charity I want to give to for the month and drag on a bar for each charity to change the amount of my £5 going to that particular charity. Its kind of like those computer games where you increase the ‘strength’ bar and it automatically reduces your ‘speed’ and ‘range’ say. If that makes any sense.
Information:
Assuming I has chosen to be part of this 'Chari-choice' scheme at work would expect to get an email/newsletter every month with my payslip to tell me I can log in and change my donations if I wish. This could provide information on new charities, new crises situations which it could suggest to chose this month, and also news details on volunteering and charity work by teams in the company. Ie the ’HR departments trip to XXXXX’ etc. More of this in the next bit.
Involvement:
As well as receiving a newsletter and portal where I can log in and have pertinent news to me I would expect my company the charity to offer opportunities to allow me to engage to help out .What I would like to see is charities here offering to get employees involved through events/talks/ trips.
Corporate Involvement:
Corporations should explore the values both in terms of motivation and cohesion of employees but also the potential benefits in marketing as they get involved more proactively in charity. Also in many companies as part of remuneration staff are offered free gym membership, gifts and bonuses, health insurance etc. I may be being massively naïve in believing that a bit of charity money, lets say 0.5% on top of regular salary to donate where the employee wishes is workable?
I suppose this is a scale issue too. If numerous large employers with 1000's of employees utilise such a charity middleman the potential sums of money going to charities are huge allowing them the funds to in turn liaise more closely with the companies and provide better engagement opportunities, and the cycle continues.
Anyway, a few ideas that I thought I’d put out there and happy to hear your thoughts.
Areas I would like to see improved:
Flexibility.
Lets say I get a leaflet for a charity through my door or am stopped by a charity fundraiser on the street. I like the aims of the charity and decide to give my £5 a month to the charity and in return receive a letter or an email every month or so telling me where my money is going and how much it is helping. Great.
Now what if next month there is a flood in Bangladesh or perhaps there is an urgent appeal for shelter provisions local homeless as it turns out we are going to have an exceptionally cold winter? I’m sorry, there’s only so much I can afford, I could go through an arduous process of cancelling my present subscription and redirecting my donation, but really, my hands are tied.
Choice.
So I want to donate £5 to charity a month, but as well as flexibility I would like to split my £5 easily between 2 or 3 charities. But I wont want to go through a separate payment process of sending through my account details each and every time for each and every charity.
Information.
I get an update every month or two, but I might want more from my chosen charity. I might want to know regularly about current crises, new charities. I might want to know where groups of people in my community/workplace are giving money to address new issues.
Involvement.
I give my money, and I get a bit of peace of mind, but I don’t really feel involved, and that my money is actually making an impact. And what about beyond money, Don’t my ideas have an impact too? I want to feel that as well as just a vessel for funding I can be a contributor and a resource, and part of a team and movement.
Corporate donations.
Companies give large sums of money to chosen charities and have various schemes by which employees can get involved either through volunteering or donate from their pay packages etc. But I believe they fail to wholeheartedly embrace charity into their culture and miss an opportunity to utilise charity donations to foster motivation, team working and engagement of their own employees
A suggestion
I have some ideas which can either work on their own to cover the above points but I have combined together for conciseness.
A possible combined solution would via a new organisation which acts as middle man between charities and businesses and works with large businesses as a consultancy to outsource their charitable process. For argument sake lets call it ‘Chari-choice’ (terrible name I know). They would work with the business and its employees to chose a number of charities and set up a portal for employees wishing to get involved to have an account where donations could be added or come straight from their payslip . eg ‘Chari-choice – Tesco’ portal. Chari-choice would then update the portal, or leave it to the company to manage and update with information on chosen charities.
Flexibility and choice:
I think a lot of the issues here is with the interface. I know there are websites where once acting as a centralised donation portal can pick from numerous charities to donate (i.e. charitychoice.co.uk or charitygiving.co.uk). However they are not very flexible and do not solve the problems of choice. What I would like to see is a portal where I log on and have an amount in ‘my account’ where as often as I want, and see a list of charities and I can in tick the boxes of the charity I want to give to for the month and drag on a bar for each charity to change the amount of my £5 going to that particular charity. Its kind of like those computer games where you increase the ‘strength’ bar and it automatically reduces your ‘speed’ and ‘range’ say. If that makes any sense.
Information:
Assuming I has chosen to be part of this 'Chari-choice' scheme at work would expect to get an email/newsletter every month with my payslip to tell me I can log in and change my donations if I wish. This could provide information on new charities, new crises situations which it could suggest to chose this month, and also news details on volunteering and charity work by teams in the company. Ie the ’HR departments trip to XXXXX’ etc. More of this in the next bit.
Involvement:
As well as receiving a newsletter and portal where I can log in and have pertinent news to me I would expect my company the charity to offer opportunities to allow me to engage to help out .What I would like to see is charities here offering to get employees involved through events/talks/ trips.
Corporate Involvement:
Corporations should explore the values both in terms of motivation and cohesion of employees but also the potential benefits in marketing as they get involved more proactively in charity. Also in many companies as part of remuneration staff are offered free gym membership, gifts and bonuses, health insurance etc. I may be being massively naïve in believing that a bit of charity money, lets say 0.5% on top of regular salary to donate where the employee wishes is workable?
I suppose this is a scale issue too. If numerous large employers with 1000's of employees utilise such a charity middleman the potential sums of money going to charities are huge allowing them the funds to in turn liaise more closely with the companies and provide better engagement opportunities, and the cycle continues.
Anyway, a few ideas that I thought I’d put out there and happy to hear your thoughts.
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