Donate your spare change app to launch in Ireland
Howard Lake | 18 December 2018 | News
An app that lets people donate their spare change to charity when making a purchase will be launched in Ireland next year.
Change Donations was created by Amelia Scivier, Lizzy Hayashida and William Conaghan who met on Trinity College Dublin’s MBA programme. The idea for a giving app developed from their participation in the programme’s entrepreneurship module.
The founders chose to focus on the rounding-up model of giving of micro-donations. They also chose to offer users some flexibility in how they user it. For example:
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- users choose which charity they want to benefit
- they can choose which type of purchases they wish to round up
- they can set a monthly limit on how much in total they wish to donate
- they can pause rounding-up
- they can reduce or increase the amount donated
- they can donate to more than one charity
Ms Scivier told the Irish Examiner: “You link your credit or debit card, and it rounds up all of your purchases to the next euro. You can set rules; for example, it will only round up to a certain limit and you can allocate it to one or several charities that you choose”.
The idea behind the app is that donors “may not feel the impact but can see the impact.”
The giving tool is initially available only in web form, with the app in development.
Student startup accelerator
The trio won the top prize last summer at LaunchBox, Trinity College’s student startup accelerator. They won €3,500 and free office space at Dogpatch Labs in Dublin’s Docklands.
Tax-efficient donations
Change Donations also ensures that donations are tax-efficient. Irish taxpayers who donate €250 or more to a registered charity can pass on the 31% tax relief to that charity. Change Donations maintains a record of the multiple donations generated to enable donors to keep track of their money.
Charities will be charged a monthly administrative fee by Change Donations, based on a percentage of the total amount they receive via the platform. It includes transaction fees.
The first two charities to sign up are The Hope Foundation and Rehab. A UK launch is planned for March 2019.
WATCH: Change Donations
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.