Ever since the earthquake that shattered Haiti, organizations have started looking into the concept of mobile giving. Text your contribution to help out a charitable cause, what could be simpler than that? How about “tweeting” your contribution?
Twitter has a new micro-philanthropy platform that is improving the way social media can be used to support causes. This new platform is called tinyGive. We tend to see donors and philanthropists as large corporations or millionaires who give enough money to have their names all over buildings or in the news. But tinyGive focusses more on those who just have a passion to give, taking the view that small amounts given by the masses can quickly outweigh large amounts given by the few.
“We’re a team of folks with deep experience in research and practice related to charitable giving and online activism. Our mission is to change how we think about giving, to show that every tiny bit matters, and that simple actions can have a big impact. In this new world of online activism, tweets, likes, and check-ins mean something. With tinyGive they now mean even more.” (https://tinygive.com/about)
So how does it work? All the donor has to do is include the handle of the organization they wish to donate to, the amount they wish to donate, and the hashtag “#tinygive” in a tweet. It’s as simple as that. The donor will have to create a tinyGive account where they will be asked to enter their credit card information. All future tweet donations will be taken from the card on file. A donation can be made anywhere from $1 to $500 per tweet and the donations are disbursed to the organization 7 days after the tweet is made. After each donation the donor will receive an email confirmation on behalf of the organization. This confirmation will also serve as the donor’s receipt for income tax purposes. The hope is that donors will then share this information by tweeting about how easily they just donated to their favorite cause, and encourage others to do the same.
An organization must be registered in order to receive donations through tinyGive, which is also a snap to do. Just enter the twitter account, email address, password, and organization’s EIN, confirm that the organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and that’s it. There are no fees to register, however tinyGive takes 4.9 percent plus 50 cents of each donation made. The donor has the option to assume these fees so that the organization doesn’t have to. Currently tinyGive has over 150 nonprofit organizations registered to receive tweet contributions.
For more information about tinyGive, to set up a tinyGive account, or to register a nonprofit organization to receive tweet donations visit www.tinygive.com.
