For techPresident, I wrote a long piece on Frictionless Charity: How the Internet is Disrupting the Way We Give
When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced his Timeline profile design back in 2011, he said it would create a “frictionless experience,” making the apps you use, the articles you read and the music you listen to automatically shareable on Facebook. Philanthropy is also taking a “frictionless” route – donating can be as simple as sharing a Facebook post or tweeting a string of characters – but this new trend is disrupting the role of charities and how they interact with donors.
Take Centscere, a web service created by a group of students at Syracuse University, whose mission is to “turn your social media actions into charitable donations.” You can choose how much to donate for each post or like on Facebook, or for every tweet on Twitter, and then select your favorite charity among a list. Your credit card is charged every time you reach $7.99 in donations and your contact information is provided to the nonprofits you donate to so that they can keep you abreast of their latest efforts. The main targets of the platform are millenials.
“The methods that worked on the baby boomers and older generations just won’t work with us,” Centscere co-founder Ian Dickerson tells TechPresident. “We grew up online; it’s part of our everyday behavior. We can’t afford to give as much as older generations, but we would happily give some change here and there. For charities it’s also a way to build a relationship early on so that when we do have an income, and can make larger donations, we’ll donate to them.”
Read Frictionless Charity: How the Internet is Disrupting the Way We Give
