ChipIn offers free way to collect money online from social networks
Howard Lake | 19 July 2006 | News
ChipIn is a US-based service, soft-launched in May 2006, that allows people and their friends to collect money or chip in to a collection for a charity or other project. Currently it does not charge for its services, whether you are an organiser, participant, or recipient.
ChipIn’s creators say that it “makes collecting money from your social network easy by automating the time-consuming process of soliciting and collecting monetary contributions.”
The service is not aimed solely at charities and nonprofit organisations. Indeed, most of the uses that the site suggests for its service are personal and individual, such as a birthday or wedding present, sharing rent, splitting bills, office parties, and group travel.
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To set up a ChipIn appeal you need to plan to ask at least three people via email, and set a target of between $10 and $3,000. You need to select a closing date: appeals can not just run and run.
You can choose whether you want to make your ChipIn private or public, and the site now offers tools that enable users to add links to their ChipIn on their website or blog.
PayPal or a credit card
Participants can contribute to a ChipIn using PayPal or any major credit card, and they are not required to register or provide any personal information to contribute.
ChipIn does not collect any funds until the event is successful, at which point it sends participants a “Thank You” email. If the event total is not reached in time you can choose to collect whatever money has been pledged or cancel the event/appeal and not charge the contributors.
As such this is not a rival to the established online donation services offered by Justgiving, Bmycharity and Charities Aid Foundation. Given it’s US origins there is for example no facility to add a Gift Aid declaration for donations to registered charities.
However, it could prove a useful tool for organisations keen to exploit the possibilities of social network giving. More importantly though it could help fundraisers think through the essential elements of setting up an online appeal. In addition, as social network sites such as MySpace, Bebo and SecondLife gain popularity and user numbers, such a non-charity specific method of giving could prove popular and therefore another channel for charities.
ChipIn is not unique. Its features are similar to those of dropcash and fundable.org, for example, although the latter currently charges 8.9%. The UK’s .net magazine featured ChipIn recently and gave it a 59% chance of survival. Gift Hub described it as “Grassroots giving through technology. Nice idea”.
At the very least it qualifies as one of the small but growing number of fundraising or giving-related “Web 2.0” services that UK Fundraising has been following and reporting on.
To find out how easy it is to set up a ChipIn we’ve created one for UK Fundraising:
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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.