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Dollar a Day

dollaraday.co

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Re: Dollar a Day

#21

Post by travisfischer »

I was hoping this would be implemented as:

- I sign up to donate at least a dollar a day.

- There is a growing list of non-profits supported.

- I get emails with newly added ones.

- For each non-profit I get to choose to either:

a) add a full additional dollar a day for that organization

or

b) add the new organization to a list of organizations that split my daily existing donation amount.

or

c) skip it.

I dislike this implementation for a number of reasons.

* From the non-profits perspective, re-occuring and emotionally invested donations are much more valuable than a one off big shot of money.

* From my perspective I will never donate to an unknown entity regardless of filtering criteria. I have limited resources and believe I can have the impact I want to have by chosen where to use those resources.

* If this system catches on I imagine it will result in many a controversy, which may just be the price dollaraday.co is willing to pay, but it sure seems like an unnecessary distraction.

Re: Dollar a Day

#22

Post by jacalata »

jawns wrote: post #3

I _love_ the idea of getting a daily email that tells you about a worthy nonprofit that you might not otherwise hear about, and this system makes it dead-simple to make micro-donations to each charity. However, I _hate_ the idea of donating to a black box. True, Dollar a Day publishes its criteria for selecting nonprofits, but those criteria are highly subjective. And, according to the FAQ, there's no way to opt out…

Since they're a nonprofit, they could simply offer the option to have that days dollar go to them instead.

Re: Dollar a Day

#23

Post by ddlatham »

jacalata wrote: post #22
jawns wrote: post #3

I _love_ the idea of getting a daily email that tells you about a worthy nonprofit that you might not otherwise hear about, and this system makes it dead-simple to make micro-donations to each charity. However, I _hate_ the idea of donating to a black box. True, Dollar a Day publishes its criteria for selecting nonprofits, but those criteria are highly subjective. And, according to the FAQ, there's no way to opt out…

Since they're a nonprofit, they could simply offer the option to have that days dollar go to them instead.

That sets up a perverse incentive for their organization however.

Re: Dollar a Day

#24

Post by cbr »

This approach would make sense if most charities were similar in how much better they could make the world with your dollar. But instead there are huge differences! For example, if we look just at developing world health we see a power law distribution, where a few interventions are much better than the rest. [1] Instead of signing up to give small amounts to lots of different organizations, it's much better to find one working on one of these best approaches (givewell.org is helpful here) and fund that more.

[1] http://www.jefftk.com/daly-per-1000-usd.png

Re: Dollar a Day

#25

Post by btown »

Someone1234 wrote: post #10
jawns wrote: post #3

I _love_ the idea of getting a daily email that tells you about a worthy nonprofit that you might not otherwise hear about, and this system makes it dead-simple to make micro-donations to each charity. However, I _hate_ the idea of donating to a black box. True, Dollar a Day publishes its criteria for selecting nonprofits, but those criteria are highly subjective. And, according to the FAQ, there's no way to opt out…

I both agree and disagree. On one hand I agree that it would be nice to opt out of charities you disagree with. However I think in doing so it would destroy "Dollar a Day's" USP. To me the USP of "Dollar a Day" is: Completely hassle free donating at an affordable cost ($30/month) which gives you almost endless positive feedback (i.e. every day you're reminding of why you're a "good person"). As soon as you start addi…

People read countless mailing list digests, site updates, etc. every day. On the spectrum of "hassle-free," even if something's not all the way over at "no action needed," it's still a vast improvement for it to be at "action only needed when I really disagree with today's charity choice."

Re: Dollar a Day

#26

Post by iLoch »

jawns wrote: post #7
aganders3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting take on this would be each day having to say "nope" to the nonprofit if you wanted to skip it. Make it an opt-out donation each morning (or a chosen time). You could defer all the "no" dollars into a pile so the user could add a bonus dollar in the same way for another day. Edit: I think you added this to your reply already! I love the idea, though.

I like your idea of being able to defer a dollar and then donate it to another charity you like more. That way, you're still donating a fixed $30/month, but you can distribute it more to your liking.

I think what he was more talking about was having an invisible balance. Every month you have $30, and if you choose to opt out of a payment one day, that just means you'll have $31 for the next 30 days. And now that I've actually thought about that, it doesn't make much sense - since you're only donating 1 dollar a day. Maybe you could choose to "add my credit to today's payment", or maybe they just allow you to run your account for longer after you choose to discontinue your subscription (but that is sort of a disincentive to continue subscribing for people who commonly choose to skip payments.)

Re: Dollar a Day

#27

Post by joeteplow »

aganders3 wrote: post #4
jawns wrote: post #3

I _love_ the idea of getting a daily email that tells you about a worthy nonprofit that you might not otherwise hear about, and this system makes it dead-simple to make micro-donations to each charity. However, I _hate_ the idea of donating to a black box. True, Dollar a Day publishes its criteria for selecting nonprofits, but those criteria are highly subjective. And, according to the FAQ, there's no way to opt out…

An interesting take on this would be each day having to say "nope" to the nonprofit if you wanted to skip it. Make it an opt-out donation each morning (or a chosen time). You could defer all the "no" dollars into a pile so the user could add a bonus dollar in the same way for another day. Edit: I think you added this to your reply already! I love the idea, though.

Hey! founder of goodst.org here...

To solve this exact problem our model is a bit different. Our daily email features one cause and outlines two charities addressing the problem in a different way.

(Ex Cause: breast cancer Charity 1: Research Charity 2: Support for survivors. You can choose to donate to either of those or if you don't like the cause of the day you can rollover your donation to the next day.

Rollover as much as you like :) We have a few users rolling over 10 days in a row until they hit a cause that resonates with them.

Re: Dollar a Day

#28

Post by ryana »

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the non-profit and B-Corp space, I'm very interested to see how this plays out. It's an interesting idea and one that can definitely have a lot of value if it resonates with donors.

However, I do worry about that last point. One of the most important part of NPO fundraising is around building a relationship with the donor. Dollar a Day seems to take that piece out of the fundraising process, for better or worse.

Best case, outsourcing your donor outreach to Dollar a Day opens you up to thousands of new donors who get to learn more about you.

Worst case, it's Groupon for non-profit donations; taking away your ability to market your brand and spamming you into a few million inboxes who will likely unsubscribe after a 3-6 months of daily emails.

Re: Dollar a Day

#29

Post by wmeredith »

travisfischer wrote: post #21

I was hoping this would be implemented as: - I sign up to donate at least a dollar a day. - There is a growing list of non-profits supported. - I get emails with newly added ones. - For each non-profit I get to choose to either: a) add a full additional dollar a day for that organization or b) add the new organization to a list of organizations that split my daily existing donation amount. or c) skip it. I dislike th…

I was hoping the same thing :(

Re: Dollar a Day

#30

Post by bmmayer1 »

travisfischer wrote: post #21

I was hoping this would be implemented as: - I sign up to donate at least a dollar a day. - There is a growing list of non-profits supported. - I get emails with newly added ones. - For each non-profit I get to choose to either: a) add a full additional dollar a day for that organization or b) add the new organization to a list of organizations that split my daily existing donation amount. or c) skip it. I dislike th…

I have to agree. If I don't know where my money is going, I simply can't countenance giving money to a nonprofit (or a company for that matter). I don't know what their selection process is. The one nonprofit they show on their site, Shelterbox, I've seen in action in the Philippines and I have a lot of issues with how they run their operation and the efficacy of their solution.

I've actually looked into that model. You wouldn't have to have partnerships with nonprofits, you can just mail them checks (they are already set up to receive donations and you don't need permission to donate!)

The wrinkle with that concept is with pass-through donations, the donor can't claim a tax exemption unless the pass-through entity is also classified as such. The way around it is to set up a clearinghouse with a bank that authorizes the pass-through entity to write checks on behalf of members. Then when you donate your $1 a day, it goes into your bank account, and checks are written from there every month to the charities of your choice. Then you have to figure out pricing and transaction fees with the extra overhead you're introducing across sending payments to multiple nonprofits.

Maybe it's not a big deal with $1 a day, but if you want to scale to supporting bigger recurring donations people are going to want a tax exemption.

It's a good start but I think it needs to be thought out more to become a viable product.

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