GIVEasia

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GIVEasia: Democratizing Giving.

Singapore, SingaporeSingapore, Singapore
Year Founded:
2009
Organization type: 
nonprofit/ngo/citizen sector
Project Stage:
Growth
Budget: 
$50,000 - $100,000
Website:
http://give.asia
Twitter: 
https://twitter.com/givesingapore
Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/giveasia.org/
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Project Summary
Elevator Pitch

Concise Summary: Help us pitch this solution! Provide an explanation within 3-4 short sentences.

GIVEasia enables charities/individuals to raise funds through the powers of social media by allowing them to create profiles which can be shared across all platforms. Information is shared and donations administered with ease and transparency. GIVEasia is promoting a culture of giving in Asia.

WHAT IF - Inspiration: Write one sentence that describes a way that your project dares to ask, "WHAT IF?"

What if the process of giving was made so simple, meaningful and appealing that everyone started donating and fundraising?
About Project

Problem: What problem is this project trying to address?

The difficulty found through trying to raise funds for social movements. It was realized that there was space for a fun and easily-navigable platform through which people could share/support fundraising missions. We want to inspire a lifestyle of giving and also help to raise awareness for all charities involved.

Solution: What is the proposed solution? Please be specific!

The solution to the problem is to develop, deliver and maintain the website platform which can be used by individuals and charities alike. GIVEasia maintains online donation forms, maintains real-time reporting, provides the industry-wide lowest transaction fee, pioneers sports fundraising and maintains tools to make online giving seamless. SInce 2010, GIVEasia has channelled S$8 million to charities and over 700k people have visited the GIVEasia website.

Awards

Won [email protected] Social Enterprise Challenge 2009. Won the SPRING NTU Ideas Inc Business Challenge 2010. Received a special mention as the youth social enterprise of the year award as part of the President’ s Challenge Social Enterprise Award 2013.
Impact: How does it Work

Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.

GIVEasia has partnered with various companies and events to help them fundraise. An example of this is their partnership with Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore. In 2010 and before partnering with GIVEasia, Standard Chartered Marathon raised S$10,000 and this was largely through offline methods. When the partnership was made in 2011, over S$200,000 was raised for over 75 charities through the pages made by runners to raise funds. Since the beginning of the partnership, S$950,000 has been raised.

Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.

Within a few months of launching the GIVE fundraising website, volunteer groups like Charity Bike n Blade started using the website for their events. This charity in particular held an event in 2010 and GIVEasia helped to empower each of their 90 cyclists to create a personal fundraising page on the site and share it with their friends, family members and colleagues to raise funds for St Lukes ElderCare Ltd in a simple, hassle-free manner. Thanks to Charity Bike n Blade, the event beneficiary St Lukes ElderCare Ltd was able to receive SGD 385K through the fundraising event exceeding the initial target by 250%. Over the next few years, by helping charities like this to fundraise, we aim to have had a total amount of S$25 million donated through GIVEasia and 375 companies, events and groups registered on GIVEasia.

Spread Strategies: Moving forward, what are the main strategies for scaling impact?

During the next two years, GIVEasia aims to focus on two key areas. The first is intervention within Non-Profit Organizations and Grassroots Social Projects: the report of the Commissioner of Charities in 2014 confirmed that there are 2,180 charities in Singapore. 52% of these are small, with receipts of under S$250,000. Because of the nature of these small, local charities, they do not have the resources they need to build their own solutions. GIVEasia will provide solutions and workshops for these charities. GIVEasia also aims to increase their user base by over 100k by 2017.
Sustainability

Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?

GIVEasia does not charge commission fees from donations but instead prompts the donor at checkout for a small tip. Since 2014, the amount has increased from 1.4% to 2.5%. GIVEasia also offers charities an Online Fundraising Website Management service, a monthly recurring donations feature (at S$199 per month), training workshops for charities, consultations for corporates and events and charity website management tools.

Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?

The two main websites addressing this problem in Singapore are "SG Gives" and "SimplyGiving"."SG Gives" does not allow fundraisers to create campaigns and does not offer a mobile-friendly experience. Throughout 2015, 70% of GIVEasia traffic has been through mobile and tablet devices, making it essential that the website is fit for this method. GIVEasia also offers monthly workshops that all charities can attend. "SG Gives" has a 3.21% transaction fee and "SimplyGiving" has a transaction fee of 7% in comparison to GIVEasia, whose transaction fee is just 2%.
Team

Founding Story

The idea behind GIVE was born out of the experiences Yu Ming and Aseem had as undergraduate students at NUS raising funds for social causes they cared about. After a few fundraising experiences for local charities in Singapore, they were frustrated by how hard it was to support a social cause in a way that was easy, fun and meaningful. They spoke with hundreds of charities and youths in Singapore over a period of a year before they concluded that there was a new wave of young people who wanted to give back but charities seemed to be missing the opportunity to engage these modern philanthropists in meaningful ways.

Team

Aseem: Co-Founder, Full Time, Marketing. Yu Ming: Co-Founder, Full Time, Operations. Luke: Part-Time, Community. Rosie: Part-Time, Content. Amanda: Part-Time, Content. Jessica: Part-Time, Content. Zi: Part-Time, Engineer. Tanin: Part-Time, Engineer. Tomek: Part-Time, Engineer. Danny: Part-Time, UX. Gia: Part-Time, UX.
Background
Please confirm how you heard about the Unilever Awards:

An e-mail from Ashoka

Please confirm your role in the initiative (eg Founder/co-Founder) and your organisational title:

Aseem K Thakur: Co-founder and CEO

Which of the 8 UN Global Goals (Sustainable Development Goals) pre-selected for this competition does your solution relate most closely to? [select all that apply]

No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Clean Water and Sanitation, Responsible Consumption and Production.

Leadership and the Unilever Awards
Please provide examples of any previous entrepreneurial initiatives you have pioneered.

2008 - 2010, Spread E-love, Singapore (co-founder): Aggregated positive news around the web to spread joy instead of fear.
2007-2008, Clubbing in Asia, Singapore (co-founder): Launched the only niche social network in Singapore for late-night party-goers.
2006-2007, Jumbo Supper, Singapore (co-founder): Solved late-night hunger pangs for university students living in hostels.

Beyond your existing team, who else are you working with to achieve your objectives, eg partners, advisors, mentors?

GIVEasia’s banking partner is DBS and we currently use their payment gateway eNETS to process the credit and debit cards that donors currently use to make donations on GIVEasia. We are grateful that DBS has extended us a low transaction fee rate of 2% and this makes us the most cost-effective donation platform to receive donations in Singapore. We continue to work closely with DBS to find ways in which we can make the payment experience for donors even more seamless and reduce the transaction fees further, so more funds reach charities and their beneficiaries. Recently, we also joined the PACT incubator that has been started with sponsorship from DBS Foundation.

Under the Project Law Help Pro Bono Services, we get free legal consultation and advice from Bird & Bird. Since the beginning of GIVEasia, they have advised us on all our legal agreements with charities, users, and partners. Moreover, they have also ensured the compliance of our business model with current regulations and legislature.

GIVEasia has been one of the incubatee companies for the NUS Enterprise Incubator since 2010 and as a result of that we use an office space in NUS that is heavily subsidized. We also receive other assistance from NUS Enterprise like business advice, introduction to industry mentors/ potential hires, and invite to networking sessions as well as nominations to international business plan competitions. We have participated in Intel Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge and Hong Poly University Business Plan competition thanks to the nominations we received from NUS Enterprise.

The three mentors who give GIVEasia constant advice and support are:
Walt Mayo - Senior Vice President of International Expansion​ ​at Endeavor Global
Jan Croeni - Serial entrepreneur-turned philanthropist dedicated to create a better world, mainly through the Croeni Foundation
Abdullah Tarmugi - Former Speaker of Parliament and a Member of Parliament