# Givey hosts giving frequency experiment

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2014/11/14/givey-hosts-giving-frequency-experiment/
- Published: 2014-11-14T17:50:56+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

What matters is not how much you give but how often. That is the idea behind a new
social experiment launched by British entrepreneur Dave Erasmus, creator of the 
Givey donation platform.

He, like many fundraisers, wants to understand how we can replicate the rapid outpouring
of charitable giving seen in the #ALSicebuckethchallenge in August. But he is _not_
thinking of how to replicate it in the form of yet  one  more hashtag-driven viral
campaigns, or even 100 of them. Instead he is asking: “How can we make this happen
every single day?”

## Giving Frequency project

His **Giving Frequency** project is testing his belief that giving is good for us,
and that social platforms now provide sufficient incentive and reward for giving
to become a normal part of our everyday lives. By understanding the online giving
culture more he is working to to identify factors that could encourage people to
develop an ‘every day giving habit’, so that spontaneous social giving becomes a
normal everyday activity ­ not a difficult to replicate one-off.

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The project opened this week with a series of video interviews with leaders in the
world of charitable giving, philanthropy, economics and neuroscientists. These are
designed to present the current understanding of what ‘state of the art’ giving 
looks like right now. The first interview is with Roots & Shoots founder Dr Jane
Goodall.

 

![Dave Erasmus, founder of Givey](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/
2014/11/dave-erasmus-givey.jpg)

Dave Erasmus, founder of Givey

 

## Givey redeveloped to showcase giving frequency

Erasmus is using his Givey platform to host the experiment. His team have redeveloped
the platform with some changes that will help test his ideas.

From now on, the 16,000 users of the platform will **not be able to disclose the
amount that they donate**. Instead, the value of their contribution will be represented
by **the frequency with which they donate**. The frequency will be a mandatory and
public feature of an individual’s Givey profile.

Social interactions and sharing have also been enhanced to encourage a stronger 
peer to peer influence, and to map the impact of this.

To help boost giving, Givey has reduced charges for business clients, to allow more
employers to incentivise workplace giving by matching employee donations.

## Six month experiment

[The Giving Frequency](http://givingfrequency.com/) project will run for six months,
with live analytics of user behaviour on the revised Givey platform available on
request. The results will be published in a book due to be published in December
2015.

Erasmus welcomes contributions and feedback on the videos and the project. Contributors
will be rewarded with a reference in the published book.

 

**Givey statistics in 2014 to date**

569 charities have received donations

Donations total £350,000 since 1 January

Top 100 charities on the platform have each received £1,000+

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