Grad Profiles highlight the personal and professional stories of Founder Institute Graduates from across the globe.
This profile on iGiveFirst, a Graduate of the Denver Founder Institute, was written by Emma Tzeng. Emma blogs at http://emmatzeng.wordpress.com, and you can also follow her on Twitter at @emmatzeng.
How outstanding do you feel when your status update or photo racks up several “likes” on Facebook? Or when someone retweets content you produced or shared—don’t you uninhibitedly gloat at how important you suddenly feel?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could transfer some of those feel-good, social media-generated vibes to causes that you care deeply about?
With iGiveFirst, you can.
Here’s how it works: When users stumble across “Give” buttons placed near inspiring content, they can click through to access more information and donate to a pre-approved, federally-registered nonprofit linked to the content. In this way, iGivefirst acts as both a platform for discovering new, trustworthy charities, and as a digital wallet for donating online.
iGivefirst is the brainchild of Sharif Youssef, a veteran in the technology industry who has led multi-million dollar solutions from ideation to launch for IBM, Experian, and Acxiom. On iGivefirst’s official site, Youssef refers to himself as a visionary and executor of out-of-the-box ideas. True to character, Youssef’s creative juices spurred him on to recognize an untapped opportunity to make online giving easier and more secure.
To carry his idea to actualization, Youssef recruited Chris Love, an enterprise software architect with a prolific history of leading high-profile projects for Motorola, Johnson & Johnson, and Oracle; and Bill Hunter, a corporate attorney and expert in e-commerce, Internet, social media, affiliate marketing, advertising, and data privacy.
All three founders have over 15 years of experience in their respective fields. They are also wildly passionate about using technology to inspire philanthropy.
“The ‘Give’ button empowers people worldwide to unite in their effort to positively impact the things that really matter,” Youssef explains.
Today, iGivefirst has grown to nine employees and six advisors. Publications such as Hypervocal, a Gen-Y magazine that advocates for social good, and ICOSA, a media network that encourages cooperation among communities to address social issues, have also started displaying “Give” buttons on their websites.
“A company’s commitment to social and environmental issues has undeniable weight in the marketplace,” iGivefirst’s website reads.
A statistic from the 2010 Do Well Do Good Survey shows that 80 percent of people are likely to switch to a brand that supports a cause they care about. iGivefirst makes it easy for companies to publicly display and establish personal connections with customers based on the causes they champion. It also matches online content to relevant charities and presents website owners with opportunities to earn revenue through content-related advertising.
When non-profits sign up for the service, iGivefirst charges a five percent transaction fee for managing the non-profit’s tax reporting, customer service, online fundraising efforts, and payment processing. In 2010, the U.S. alone racked up $346.2 billion in charitable spending, of which 75% came from individual donors. The philanthropy market is brimming with potential and iGivefirst is braced to capitalize on the opportunity.
The service is safe, too. With the help of 256 encryption—tech speak for “the latest security methods and process,” according to the official website, iGivefirst makes it a priority to keep users’ personal information secure.
The company also re-engineers the online giving process, making it more seamless, organized, and social. On that note, iGivefirst donors can broadcast the causes they donate to through social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Users who activate iGivefirst accounts can also access their donation histories and receive automated tax reporting.
iGivefirst wants to bridge the interactions among corporate sponsors, online publications, and content consumers by acting as the platform for organizations to define their values and for consumers to easily discover and respond to worthy charitable causes.
Isn’t that a cause worth championing?
For more information on iGivefirst:
