

SwipeGood (YCW11) Raises $500K From Michael Birch And Others - anemitz
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/10/swipegood-raises-500k-from-michael-birch-and-others-to-allow-you-to-donate-with-each-purchase/

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corin_
If SwipeGood can help pursuade people to donate more to charities then good
for them, but it's not for me.

I already donate to a few charities on a monthly basis, and am open to making
one-off donations now and then to others (and do that fairly often).

I donate based on how much money I'm willing to not have - i.e. the most I am
"able" to afford without it impacting on my other monetary plans. If I used
SwipeGood then it would either donate more (which I don't want, and if I did,
I would chose to donate more right now) or less (and -5% for SwipeGood), so it
would be a lose/lose.

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kalvin
I average 40 credit card transactions per month, or about $20/month ->
$240/year under SwipeGood's average-50-cents-to-charity-per-swipe model.
Assuming that's typical, since the average American household donates approx.
$1000/year, a SwipeGood user would be increasing their household's giving by
20%. (Swipegood takes 5%)

But it'd be interesting to find out if users ended up giving less outside of
SwipeGood because they feel they've "already given"-- or if they end up giving
more because they have charities on the mind (giving to one cause is
unsurprisingly strongly correlated with other philanthropic activities.)

Edit: Also, I think it's great that YC is funding a startup like this. I'm
reminded of "Be Good": <http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html>

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jonny_eh
Interesting... it takes money for donations for each transaction, but it's not
dependent on the size of transaction. So each time you use your credit car it
will "randomly" donate $0.01-0.99 to a charity?

I could see more people signing up for something like this than traditional
"10% of gross income" that people tend to promote.

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sp_
Congrats. This is an awesome idea, simply because it takes people's laziness
out of the equation. It's kinda like that popular financial 'pay yourself
first'/'automate your finances' set it and forget it mantra but applied to
charity.

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philfreo
Congrats guys... great product idea and excellent team, I know you're going to
do well.

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SteliE
thx man! we're looking to hire amazing people so if you know anyone let me
know ( steli at swipegood dot com) ;)

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sahillavingia
Confused as to the business aspect of SwipeGood, is it a non-profit or a for-
profit (if so, how does it intend to make money)?

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corin_
As written in this very article:

    
    
      The startup makes money by taking 5% of the donation.

