
Show HN: Give a Dime – Donate change from credit card purchases - harrisonmgordon
https://www.giveadime.org
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harrisonmgordon
I'd love feedback on this project - it's been a labor of love for a year
trying to find the best charities in the bay area and making it easy for
anyone to donate what they can without a lot of effort. Thanks!

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balls187
I like this idea.

Are you storing bank credentials?

Since you posted on HN:

Besides the marketing fluff "state of the art encryption" what are you
actually doing to ensure my credentials are secure?

What prevents you from updating your TOS to be more ominous and adding a
clause buried that allows you to inspect & store our bank transactions?

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harrisonmgordon
Thanks!

We use Plaid as our bank connection API. We actually never see your bank
account, so we can't store it.

We also use Stripe for cc processing, and similarly do not store credentials,
instead opting for Stripe to do it for us.

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slg
I may be overly critical here, but I don't think it is completely right to say
in your FAQ that you don't store credentials "which means your sensitive
information is safe and secure!" Sure, _you_ don't store them. However you
still ask for them and then have someone else store them on your behalf. That
still leaves end users vulnerable to the exact same problems. The user could
still experience issues specifically because they used your service. They
wouldn't really care who is actually responsible if that were to happen, only
that it was caused by using Give A Dime.

You are responsible for your partners. Saying you won't do something isn't
completely honest if you turn around and outsource that exact same activity to
a partner.

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deegles
How would you phrase it?

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slg
I'm not sure on the exact phrasing. It can either mention Plaid by name or
some complementary descriptor about "banking level security". It just
shouldn't say credentials aren't being stored when they are being stored by a
partner.

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harrisonmgordon
That's really great feedback - I will update our FAQ to clearly state where
the data is going and some basic information on the security protocol.

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balls187
I would think how you message this. What others and I picked up on is
appropriate for this level of discourse (HN), but something that is likely not
going to make sense to your core customers.

Are customers that buy from companies that integrate with Stripe aware that it
is Stripe that stores credit card information when prompted? I don't know if
the average person can make that abstraction.

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oxplot
Dymocks bookshop in Australia does this at the checkout [1]. They ask you if
you want to round the price up and donate the extra to charities.

[1]: [https://www.dymocks.com.au/childrens-charities/round-
up](https://www.dymocks.com.au/childrens-charities/round-up)

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deftnerd
This seems like a very inefficient infrastructure to accomplish what you want
to do.

By using Plaid to determine transactions, I assume you then do a once-a-month
transaction that is the sum of all the round-ups? Or do you do a separate
transaction every time someone does a transaction?

If you're doing a separate transaction, you're paying some ridiculous Stripe
fees for the micro transactions.

I think the ideal solution would be to set up your own debit card. It's not
significantly hard to get a branded debit card solution through Bancorp. Then
you can control thins a lot more easily.

When a customer makes a $12.10 charge, you can actually charge them $13 and
just keep the 0.90 on the backend and the processing fee is only paid once.

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harrisonmgordon
We do once-a-month transactions to help with the micro-transaction issues.
We're also looking into ACH transactions to get rid of the 2.9% + 0.30 fee.

Technically you're absolutely right - setting up our own debit card would be a
great way to efficiently generate donations.

We weren't sure how likely people would be to get a new debit card though, and
many people favor credit cards so they get points. This is definitely a route
we could consider in the future though!

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rch
Fee structure (flat $0.50 +CC txn per donation) described here:

[https://www.giveadime.org/faq](https://www.giveadime.org/faq)

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harrisonmgordon
Would love feedback on this price point!

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dangrossman
If you grow large enough, you'll find that you don't need to charge your users
anything as charities will become your customers. Charities have huge budgets
for fundraising, and would pay to be promoted as a donation option.

~~~
harrisonmgordon
That's a very good point! We actually try to focus on smaller, more local
charities that don't have large marketing budgets (there are some exceptions)
- for instance, Rocket Dog Rescue doesn't even pay a staff, they are entirely
volunteer-run. Their entire marketing strategy is unpaid, and we LOVE that,
since every dollar they get is spent on helping amazing animals find homes.

These are the kind of charities we want to make sure are getting funded - the
ones that make the biggest impact/dollar in a local community.

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mesozoic
I don't really get it as one of the appeals of credit cards is you don't have
to deal with change anyway. If you want to donate just donate.

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harrisonmgordon
100% agree - I highly recommend donating even if it's not on Give A Dime.

Give A Dime is just a way to get people who are less comfortable with giving
to do so in a way that doesn't break the bank and feels manageable.

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shaaaaawn
When I worked at Bank of America I tried to do something similar with their
Keep The Change program, allow customers to have their 'change' go to the
charity of their choice instead of their savings account, I called it Give the
Change. I could never get it past the product team so I'm glad to see this
project pop up on HN today! Keep at it

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harrisonmgordon
Thanks! We link with Bank of America (and they're also my bank).

If you have connections with them, I'd love to talk about how we could work
more closely together.

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anpk
There seems to be quite a few organizations which are doing similar stuff.

swipegood.com/ [https://ca.changeit.com/](https://ca.changeit.com/)
www.rounditupamerica.org/

Maybe partner with them?

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harrisonmgordon
Swipegood was shut down in late 2011 unfortunately :( Give A Dime is most
similar to this one.

changeit.com doesn't support a lot of the popular banks/cards here in the US,
and rounditupamerica.org focuses on getting businesses on board - but you're
right, they'd be great partners!

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edent
Slightly confused - what's a "Round up charge"? Is it a US thing? Not heard of
anything like that in the UK.

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chrisseaton
'Round up charge'? Do you mean 'round up _change_ '? It's the money it would
take increase your credit card charge up to an integral number of dollars.

But I don't know why that's a suitable figure to donate to charity, over any
other.

~~~
harrisonmgordon
What makes change special is how small it seems on a day-to-day basis. We
toyed with $x/mo vs. change, and feedback showed people were more likely to
give if you describe it as change. I believe a part of that is knowing that
what you give is tied a bit to what you spend.

