Cashback and How Can it Help Your Charity

Cashback and How Can it Help Your Charity

What if your charity could earn sustainable revenue with minimal effort? The ihiveLIVE sharing platform allows members to shop online and earn cashback from themselves and their charity.

What is Cashback?

ihiveLIVE defines cashback as a percentage of a purchase made through ihiveLIVE that is earned as cash. The purpose of ihiveLIVE cashback is to help members give to their charities while shopping online like they normally would. This allows members to incorporate giving into their everyday lives and purchases. As an example, if a member made a purchase of $100.00 at their favorite bookstore like Indigo, with a cashback rate of 1.25% that member would earn $1.25 on their purchase. A little bit adds up to a lot just like when bees make honey, so imagine if 1000 people shopped for the same charity each week that would be $1250 in cashback.

How Does Cashback Help Your Charity?

For charities, cashback provides a sustainable source of revenue with minimal effort. Imagine, a source of revenue that does not require the effort and time a fundraiser would. Instead charities simply have to sign up and promote through their social media pages that they are an ihiveLIVE partner. The greatest thing about ihiveLIVE is, giving is both free and easy for both the members and the charities.

Why choose ihiveLIVE?

With consumers focused on the digital world it is important to have a path to giving that is easily accessible. ihiveLIVE takes online donations one step further by incentivising giving. By shopping online at their favourite stores, members get the benefit of receiving cashback and a physical item at their doorstep. Through the gratification of giving, ihiveLIVE promotes giving as an ongoing part of everyday purchases, whether it be for essential products or big purchases they can feel good and do good with every transaction.

Does ihiveLIVE sound like the right partnership for your charity? Click the link here to sign up today!

Give Consumers The Ads They Want

As advertising and ad measurement become more sophisticated, two things are certain: New technologies and channels are bombarding consumers with messaging, and consumers have become frustrated with advertising that they find irrelevant, disruptive and annoying.

The environment of increasing media channels (in-store smell is my new favorite), ad blockers, banner blindness, shorter attention spans and general mistrust of advertisers is tough for brands trying to get their messages to the right people. Tuning out the noise has become instinctual — even my two-year-old son has learned to “Skip Ad” in YouTube to get to his Daniel Tiger video faster. It doesn’t take a futurist to realize that we have to improve the way we advertise to consumers if our industry hopes to survive.

Fortunately, today’s technology, research and insights can help us understand consumers’ motivations and purchase behavior better than ever before and enable advertisers to give consumers what they really want: not less advertising, but better advertising. By leveraging the power of data, marketers have the power to create advertising experiences that are actually enjoyable for consumers, guiding them along their journeys to purchase.

When we put the consumer first — meaning we reach them at the right moment, with the right message and with a relevant product or service — they welcome the assistance of advertisers. That’s why I’m confident that in the future — consumer permission will be at the center of all effective advertising. Our audiences will recognize the value they can get out of advertising that is actually useful for them, so they will tell us what they’re interested in, how they want to be targeted and on what channels they’re best reached.

For example, Pinterest, an IRI partner, is already creating an environment where users ask to be advertised to. Promoted Pins show up in relevant searches and look just like regular Pins, except that advertisers pay to have them seen by more people. They don’t interrupt or distract Pinners but instead are summoned by the user looking to discover something new. Users don’t even consider Promoted Pins to be advertisements because they help users find the ideas and solutions they came to Pinterest for in the first place.

Published in Forbes (online) by Nishat Mehta
President, IRI Media Center of Excellence, improving the consumer experience through more relevant advertising.

Why It Is Time Fundraisers Embraced Lifestyle Giving

Bianca Mitchell, Partnerships Director at Savoo, explains what lifestyle giving is and why 2019 presents new opportunities for the fundraising channel.

Lifestyle giving has been gathering pace as an important fundraising channel year on year, quickly becoming a common term among many charities throughout the sector. The practice involves an act of giving made through existing payment habits. For us at Savoo, that’s every time a user shops and saves online, and at online booking platform ChariTable, that’s every time you book a restaurant.

This fundraising channel, which we see as still in its infancy, was the focus of two productive meetings which took place last year. During these meetings our group decided on a definition of what lifestyle giving is: “The act of giving to a cause through a behavioural action that raises money for charity through a third party, such as a product, service or platform.”

This definition aims to add clarity to this channel for the wider public and charities alike. The term ‘lifestyle’ aims to highlight the ease for the general public to incorporate charity into their existing lifestyle and behaviours. Why is this concept important? It’s crucial for charities to diversify their income stream in line with the changing landscape, the rise in millenial givers and digital donations.

This concept also provides an opportunity for third parties to incorporate lifestyle giving into their corporate fundraising model with a clearer understanding. Our role at Savoo was key in getting the lifestyle giving ball rolling.

SMALL CHANGES THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

Everyday habits of consumers are extremely powerful and amount to a huge impact when lots of people make these small changes, as leading mental health charity Mind said at the group meeting. It’s for this reason that we think lifestyle giving can be an incredibly reliable income stream, providing a low effort way of raising funds from a group of people that may not actively give to charity.

In fact, we see the potential for tapping into a brand new donor audience through the lifestyle giving avenue as huge. Some charities have been exploring this concept by running a lifestyle giving strategy alongside their existing fundraising channels, working digitally to bring in an entirely new donor pool.

Digital donors are typically younger, providing a vital way in for charities to establish a sense of ‘brand loyalty’ among a younger generation – crucial for the future of any charity. Effectively, the concept is a win-win for both parties. The donor can give in a way that suits them and without deviating from their original task, while charities can enjoy a steady stream of donations as well as gaining access to a wider audience.

‘LET’S NOT FORGET ABOUT EXISTING SUPPORTERS’

We know lifestyle giving is an extremely useful tool for reaching out to a new donor base, but how can we encourage existing supporters to donate outside of their regular giving channels?
Will the rise in popularity of lifestyle giving risk other donation channels being cannibalised? The need to develop an easy-to-implement model that can encourage existing supporters to use it in addition to traditional fundraising methods rather than instead of is crucial.

One opinion raised at the group meeting was from a representative of personal development charity BIRD, who said that there is a concern that donors are becoming slightly fatigued by all the good causes who are trying to win their support. This is a concern that we think the charity industry needs to address as opposed to lifestyle giving suppliers – charities need to bear in mind how their time and money is spent and which channels have the potential to add the most value.

The progress of lifestyle giving in becoming a worthy fundraising channel in the last couple of years cannot be understated. Facebook, one of the biggest companies globally, has already implemented two charitable features – the donate button and a function allowing users to ask for charitable donations for a charity of their choice on their birthday – and this is only the beginning.

That said, there’s still a way to go until it becomes a part of everyday life. With unrestricted access to an engaged audience, charities themselves need to be championing this idea.

PLANS FOR 2019

For the group, this year will be about helping charities sell into stakeholders and apply strategies within their organisations, as well as raising awareness among consumers and the wider public. We want lifestyle giving to become normal, with it one day becoming unusual for anyone to shop online without it.

In 2019 we plan to publish a best practice document that will help charities sell in and implement lifestyle giving internally. We also aim to increase the group’s online presence in the form of a website with helpful information, updated content and a directory of providers that fall under the lifestyle giving umbrella.

Want to help shape the future of lifestyle giving? Our group is made up of various individuals including charity representatives and companies driving donations via a form of lifestyle giving. Get in touch with me for more information.

Bianca Mitchell, Partnerships Director, Savoo

Guest Bloggers | 5 February 2019