Transparent Online Fundraising with GiveLoop

Jen Consalvo August 10, 2010 Tweet

In a world where Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can convince over forty billionaires to give away over half of their fortunes, we have reason to believe that a culture of giving is on the rise. And to support that, we’ve seen the proliferation of innovative online support mechanisms such as Giv.to, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Chipin and more. Each tool or site offers different types of features depending on what your goals and objectives might be. Interestingly, as society begins to demand more transparency and control, a new DreamIt Ventures startup, GiveLoop, offers a tool that enables donors to “vote with their money” increasing transparency and communication in online donations.

GiveLoop maintains that by allowing donors to specifically allocate their donation to certain items, donation rates and loyalty will increase:

Current online donations at best simply mimic the same way people have been collecting money for hundreds of years, without capitalizing on the advantages that technology & the internet can bring.  GiveLoop increases transparency and communication throughout the donation process to better engage donors in the fundraising campaign.

Like other sites, you can create your online campaign and choose options for widgets, buttons and other integrations. But what sets GiveLoop apart is the ability to itemize the things you want to raise money for, and then allow individuals to donate specifically for certain items. So if my startup product, Thankfulfor, needed money for an iPhone app, Android app and a private jet, donors could vote for the iPhone app by donating specifically to that fund. Iconography indicates if items might be ongoing, proposed by team, suggested by users, a priority, completely funded and more. The “feed” shows a running, real time list of activity, showing donations, changes in project status, comments and more. Best of all, the product requires no subscription or payment from the organization raising money. The people donating pay a 5% fee (and can determine if it should come out of the amount they are donating or not) and a credit card fee if paying by credit card instead of paypal.

Screenshot of GiveLoop Product Demo

The NYC based team of Brian Foo and Todd Spitz met at the FU Foundation School of Engineering at Columbia University in 2006, working on the idea for GiveLoop since January, 2010. They will be on hand at TECH cocktail Philly on August 12th at the Field House from 6:30 pm – 9:00pm EST.