Give or Take – a new way to shop and donate to charity

Howard Lake | 19 May 2006 | Newswire

PRESS RELEASE
GIVE OR TAKE – A NEW WAY TO SHOP AND DONATE TO CHARITY
Give or Take is a new online marketplace that connects shoppers with all the leading UK retailers. Give or Take launches this month and aims to encourage customers to feel good about shopping by donating to their chosen charity. Many people derive great pleasure from shopping – and everyone likes a bargain – so Give or Take rewards its customers by offering cash back on their purchases made through the Give or Take site and then the customer decides whether to keep the money – or donate it to charity.
Customers registered with Give or Take can shop online with confidence on participating retailers’ websites and the money they save goes into their Give or Take account. When the account reaches £25, they can then choose whether to Give or Take. One month they might give it to a charity of their choice and another they might take it for a household expense, for example, the choice is theirs and they can also let the savings accumulate before deciding what to do with the money.
Give or Take has over 500 retailers on the site, covering everything from fashion and travel to insurance and food and drink. Retailers and brands already working with Give or Take include: Apple, John Lewis, Marks and Spencer, AA, BT, Opodo, Majestic Wine, La Senza, Tesco, American Express, Sky, Virgin Games, Panasonic, Dixons, ASOS, Hertz, Waitrose Entertaining, Boden and Boots.
Charities that have already recognised the site’s fundraising potential include VOICE, Global Angels, Healthlink, Children in Crisis and Marie Stopes International, together with a number of other organisations who are in the process of signing up. The charity section of Give or Take has links to the websites of the participating charities, to help customers make their decision and then they can make their donation at the click of a mouse. Customers will also be able to use Gift Aid when donating to the charities of their choice.
Wendy Shepherd, corporate partnership manager at Children in Crisis says: ‘It is great to be included on the list of charities to benefit from the Give or Take concept. With internet shopping becoming more and more popular, it is encouraging to see that new ideas like Give or Take are giving consumers the opportunity to make a real difference to the work that we do to improve the lives of children around the world, whilst simply shopping online.’
Vikki Barr, business development manager at Give or Take says: ‘ Give or Take is the online equivalent of visiting a shopping mall, going into a shop to buy something and then putting a donation into a charity collection box by the till except, in this case, the added bonus is that the money you ‘put in the box’ is cash back from your purchase. And, if people want to keep their savings, that is fine too. We expect that regular Give or Take shoppers will do a mixture of giving and taking benefiting both themselves, and the charities.’
The company behind Give or Take is UK Web Media, founded in 2001, which is one of the largest online marketing specialists in the UK today. Whilst the two companies are separate, the wealth of industry knowledge and expertise gained from UK Web Media’s work with the major brands has helped the company develop the Give or Take idea of helping raise money for charity through shopping online.
www.giveortake.com
May 2006
For further information please contact Rossana Tich PR on + 44 (0) 20 8985 8935. E: ro*****@ro*********.uk

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.