How do you encourage others to do good in the 2010s? In a time when you can shop from your phone while on the bus while sharing photos of what you just bought, the tendency to narcissism is easier than ever to foster. So what becomes of selflessness in the age of such frictionless self-gratification?
One option is to combine the two, mixing both commerce and charity. It’s the concept behind the cleverly-named Getting Gives, a soon-to-launch Toronto-based site that seeks to combine the daily deals phenomenon with giving.
As co-founder Matt Miller explains, Getting Gives is an attempt to build a fundraising platform where people can get discounts and support their charities at the same time.
“The way we’re doing that,” says Miller “is that we’re leveraging the group buying market—so Groupon, Living Social, all those sorts of deals—and putting them all in a one-stop shop.” On the surface, then, Getting Gives is a daily deal aggregator that puts all those “get $40 of pulled pork for $20” deals on one site. The twist is in what Getting Gives does with its share of the deal.
“All we’re doing,” Miller says “is leveraging affiliate commissions to give back to that user’s favourite charity.”
That means that users get the exact same deal as they might elsewhere, but half of Getting Gives’ cut goes towards a charity donation. Users can select from some of the service’s charity partners, which include CARE and Plan Canada, or choose their own favourite, as long as the charity is officially registered as such. It’s ostensibly a win-win, letting users cut their spending while continuing to donate to charity.
There’s also a social dimension to the process. When users purchase a deal — say, saving $20 at restaurant while donating a dollar to the WWF — they can post a message to Twitter or Facebook letting their friends know. As a result, Getting Gives looks to be a tool for raising awareness as much as funds, making it a place for charities to recruit supporters, too.
Right now, the company is in prep mode for its planned launch in January, and is running a contest on social media to gather a critical mass of users — hopefully as many as ten thousand. As of time of writing, only around three hundred users have signed up, but Miller expects that number to grow significantly with a forthcoming PR push from both the service and their charity partners.
The service itself grew out Miller’s and spouse Sydney’s desire to do something constructive with their business education. Not being developers, however, technical know-how and arranging funding came from Toronto development and design house The Working Group, who have partnered with many local startups.
Yet despite the seemingly ideal blend of a buying and giving, the initial model isn’t a sure thing, however. There has been endless debate in web spheres over whether businesses like Groupon are even profitable, let alone sustainable — and we’re still waiting for an answer. In hitching their wagon to daily deals, Getting Gives does run a risk of getting dragged down should the daily deals trend evaporate like so many web trends before it. For their part though, the Millers are banking on technology’s low cost-of-entry and possible expansion into other dimensions of charitable consumption to grow and scale up.
Risk aside, however, it’s certainly an interesting approach. For good and ill, the second dot com explosion has almost focused as much on consumerism as the first, and at a time of year when giving is on the minds of many, Getting Gives feels like a pleasant change. And whether or not, as some argue, that conscious capitalism is a potentially insidious part of modern economies, the emphasis upon selflessness seems, at the very least, a step in the right direction.
