Make your donations count. Give Smarter.

Rostislav Spitchka and Jay Sherwood - University at Albany

• GiveSmarter.org - a comprehensive education, marketing, and feedback campaign that focuses on converting casual donors into social investors

• Stock Charity - a stock market-like system based around a ranking system of efficiencies which rewards conscientious donors for investing in high performing non-profits

• The Right Cause Project - a website that presents donors with a series of sliders, which the donor uses to pick from a number of causes;  the website then automatically chooses the best performing charities in the cause categories that are selected and distributes the donation accordingly

Possible Solutions

The Social Investor Problem

• Wasted potential of donations to inefficient non-profits

• Lack of understanding of why researching charities is important

• Many sources of information for charity information

• Information very confusing and dry

• Urgent need to humanize facts, figures and actual benefits of charitable donations

Solution: GiveSmarter.org — a 3 tier education, marketing, and feedback ecosystem

GiveSmart.org Approach - Donor to Social Investor

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FeedbackFeedback

GiveSmarter.org is a marketing, education, and feedback campaign that aims to convert donors into

social investors.

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SocialSocialInvestorInvestor

Part I: Marketing

• An emotional campaign to raise awareness of inefficiencies in non-profits

• Billboards, YouTube, banner ads

• All social causes considered to have largest impact

• Appeals to core emotions that cause people to donate

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Part I: Marketing (cont.)

Part II: Education

• Portal: GiveSmarter.org

• Brief explanation of demand for social investors

• Explanation of lost potential of an inefficient donation

• Educating donors about efficiency

Part II: Education (cont.)

• Charity comparison tools

• Rankings of charities via other sites

• Simple, organized information — not detailed financials

• Unitized or relatable information: “Your donation of $100 would feed X people with Charity 1, compared to Y people.”

Part III: Feedback

• Updates on charity’s status via text message, e-mail, Facebook, and mobile Apps

• Emphasizes continued diligence, rather than complacent donations to differing charity

• Personalized recommendations save donor from doing more research

Summary

• GiveSmarter.org: a three-fold approach to creating Social Investors

‣ An eye-catching, emotional marketing campaign

‣ An informative website

‣ A consistent, motivating follow-up