Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit GiveMeaning, originally added to eHub on Nov 13, 05.

eHub Interviews GiveMeaning

Thanks to Tom Williams, creator of GiveMeaning for this email interview posted February 1, 2006.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

GiveMeaning: GiveMeaning is the network for the $5 philanthropist. We believe that everyone cares about something, but most of us don’t think the small contribution we can individually afford could possibly make a difference. On top of this, many people are overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems looking for donations, so what we do is take an issue as big as say, cancer, and focus on achieving an objective that is tangible and within the realm of possibility - like a specific person’s treatment, or funding a support group, or even buying wigs or beauty supplies for someone who has lost their hair from chemo treatments.

GiveMeaning hosts web spaces (which we call GivingGroups) for these specific projects. A GivingGroup brings people together to accomplish and support each project; individuals can give money, time, supplies or simply spread the word - whatever the GivingGroup needs to accomplish its objective. We find these self-identifying communities grow quickly by word-of-mouth, and they take on a life of their own. Unlike other giving sites, 100% of all funds donated through our site go directly to the charities working to accomplish these projects; we don’t charge donors or charities any fees.

Once a GivingGroup raises its target funds, the charity partnered with the GivingGroup to implement the project regularly reports progress via blog updates that are accessible to the members of the GivingGroup.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

GiveMeaning: I started GiveMeaning for me. I’ve always been very aware of what’s happening in my own community as well as abroad and even though I expressed a desire to do something, I found that I hadn’t volunteered, hadn’t given much, hadn’t really done anything other than talk. It’s not that I’m lacking compassion or motivation, but honestly, first and foremost, I needed something that could satisfy my need for “instant gratification” - while at the same time alleviating the main reasons why I don’t give: trust, transparency, confidence that I’m actually part of the solution, and then there’s a measure that I call “Return On Generosity”.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

GiveMeaning: I’ve been working on this full-time since its inception. My nest-egg ran out just as we started getting external funding.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

GiveMeaning: The three co-founders are myself, Debra Langley and Mr. Brown. Debra and I co-founded Miavita, an online health site that was sold to Matria (NASDAQ: MATR). Debra’s background is in international publishing (The Economist, Hearst Corp) and mine is in marketing. I started at Apple in Product Marketing at 14 years old. Mr. Brown is also an established visual artist who works with us on condition of anonymity. Our CTO, Tim Stewart, co-founded and was CTO of Peerflix, a new trading model for DVD’s and other media. Other important team members are Dave Davies, who is our head of communications, Bill Roebuck, who is our front-end coder, and Nancy Wilson, who has been working on partnerships.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

GiveMeaning: We err on the side of utilitarian and simple in our design approach. We recognize that our demographic will range from 5 to 80 years old, will come from all walks of life, and will have varying levels of web experience. Thus, our focus is on helping these people, all of whom are in giving mode, to find the cause that resonates best with them, and then let them do what they want to do there - quickly and easily.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

GiveMeaning: GiveMeaning is built on ASP.Net, SQL Server, and uses AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) on pages which can benefit from it.

eHub: What are the most requested features from your users/community?

GiveMeaning: They want other community features such as person-person email, unrestricted blogging and commenting, and more tools to promote and raise awareness for GivingGroups. We’re slaves to our members. Since the people who start GivingGroups are so passionate about the causes for which they’re raising funds, they have a lot of input into what we do to build new functionality that helps them create greater awareness and engage others in their cause.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

GiveMeaning: Because tax-receipts are so important to most donors, even for the smallest of contributions, and our Foundation is currently registered only in Canada, the majority of our user-base is Canadian.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

GiveMeaning: Our next goal is to make ourselves relevant to socially-responsible corporations and to create a value proposition for companies to want to underwrite our costs. And viral growth is driving us to search for either a US partner or invest funds to have charitable status in the US and other countries. We don’t have lofty goals of market dominance. We want to continue to build and evolve the site into the preferred way to give for a certain type of donor.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

GiveMeaning: For some people, there is a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality to new paradigms of charitable giving. A large chunk of money given each year to charities is given by people who don’t see a need our service. They know what charity they support, they give at semi-regular intervals, and although they might be inconvenienced or frustrated by certain aspects of the relationship, they’re generally ok with that. They might like what we do, but for the most part, they’ll stick with writing a check to their favorite charity.

We’re after a much more amorphous group: Those who actually are like many of us - they don’t have a relationship with a charity, they don’t give at regular intervals, and charitable giving is certainly not top of mind. The biggest challenge is how do you reach the masses especially when the spectrum of what each person cares about is so different? How do you do this in a scalable, low-cost way? We think we’ve got the foundation laid to do this. Now it will be a function of evolving the tools we’ve built while staying in sync with user feedback.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

GiveMeaning: Money. Since we charge nothing for our service, we rely on generous donations to our Foundation to help pay for the costs we incur in developing, operating and marketing the site.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

GiveMeaning: The business model has not been incorporated into the current site, but it will be launched shortly. In summary, it involves fee-paying companies who want to communicate their good deeds to our audience in a highly targeted, relevant and credible way.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

GiveMeaning: We don’t disclose this.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

GiveMeaning: The entire operating budget for CARTS (a grassroots charity on GiveMeaning.com) was $10,000 for the entire year. Through our site, we raised $1,500 for them in less than three weeks. We get excited when we help raise awareness and funds for an organization like CARTS, which would otherwise struggle for visibility and be constrained in its ability to provide its services.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

GiveMeaning: Obviously, MySpace surpassing Google in numbers of page views is a very compelling statistic for a number of reasons. I think we should all pay close attention to where people choose to identify themselves for participation in online community. This “next generation” is so savvy with content authorship tools; the output of content coupled with advances in wireless multimedia makes my head spin.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

GiveMeaning: Craigslist (we found almost every single team member on Craigslist), Technorati, MySpace, Yahoo, eHub, UnderTheRadar, ChangeThis, to name a few.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

GiveMeaning: A very average 7-8 (tech team is less)!

Thanks to Tom Williams, creator of GiveMeaning for this email interview posted February 1, 2006.

Visit GiveMeaning
Originally added to eHub on Nov 13, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

Also see eHub Interviews in Japanese at CNET Japan

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