Micro Philanthropy - Turning A Little Into A Lot

Charity GreetingsI recently came across charitygreetings.com, a young and entrepreneurial company trying to make the world a better place, one card at a time.

With Charity Greetings, you can give to your friends, family and colleagues as well as to a charity of your choice.  Their aim is simple - to incorporate charitable giving into anyone’s lifestyle in an easy, practical way.   

Each card costs £1.99 to send, with a minimum of £1 going to the charity of the sender’s choice (senders can opt to donate more as well). 

Of course, being paper-free, there’s also an environmental advantage to sending e-cards instead of paper ones.  According to the Greeting Card Association, people in the UK send an average of 31 greeting cards each year… yikesssss!

The cards are all designed to be digital replicas of traditional greeting cards, to create a similar experience. Once received, the cards can be displayed and shared with friends on a personal virtual mantelpiece.  As a bookshelf acts as an illustration of one’s interests, the virtual mantelpiece is a public display of the charities someone supports and is affiliated with.  Users can also create event-specific fundraising mantelpieces, where you can track how much money has been raised for the charity.

I think it’s a really nice idea that’s both viral and social, and will hopefully encourage more people to participate.  So far it’s working, with 25% of recipients going on to send cards themselves.

This concept is part of a growing trend of micro philanthropy, where small actions and donations add up to making a big difference.  As a principle, micro philanthropy reminds me of the long tail, a niche retailing strategy of selling large numbers of unique items in relatively small quantities.  Amazon and Netflix are two companies who have succeeded with this business model.  Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief at Wired magazine, described this concept in his 2006 book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. 

Some barriers to charity fundraising are a lack of transparency within the recipient organizations as well as the feeling that giving just a little will have a miniscule impact.  Micro philanthropy embraces and champions smaller acts and donations as part of a larger system, which we’re all a part of. It’s up to the charities to be open about the allocation of donor funds.

Charity Greetings has about 100 Christmas and New Year cards to choose from, so this is a great time to hop on the micro philanthropy bandwagon by sending your family, friends and colleagues cards, with charity at the heart of your message.