At breakfast this morning, Dan Harrison came out with a deceptively simple question:
“Why isn’t there an easy way to give to charity using apps and iTunes?”
We pondered it. I tweeted the question. General response: the model wouldn’t work; the terms and conditions would kill it. Bottom line: Apple take 30%. No exceptions.
Except for Haiti. And this (deliberately?) only offered the iTunes part, not the front end from an iPhone or iTouch that could have made much more money flow in.
So, here is a way – if Apple wanted to – to transform the ease and security with which very, very large amounts of money could be given to charity. It would mean a change to those terms and conditions, and would be an enormous disruption to the way that charitable giving works.
The question is: should they?
It would certainly cost them something to administer. A (very small) service charge may be a fair way to do it. But not 30%.
Do you think they should be encouraged to do this? If you do, comment here, and/or use the hashtag #iCharity and tell your friends.
Set up a Facebook group, and all the other stuff, if you want. The idea’s there. Run with it.
Dan’s original post on the need for a trusted donations app.
Update:
Steve Bridger has told me about John Carnell’s thoughts on this. John raises one part of perhaps a more general set of issues around the Apple platform and giving. Time to take on the whole issue, I think.
My view is that the administrative cost could be covered by the money Apple could make from interest accrued from the temporary housing of the funds and the value that the increased turnover can offer them.
I want to make this work. But at the moment I’m not sure how.
The thing is, does Apple want to be in the business of a payment provider? Currently using iTunes you can only buy things from Apple, but if it started providing a service for charities, would it then want to start providing payment for other services?
I don’t think they want to be in this business, or they would have done it already.
Also, there are already many ways to donate to charity. I donate monthly via a Pay as You Earn scheme at work where it comes out of my pay check. For Haiti, I donated via text. Then there are many websites offering this. So no one has the excuse that they do not donate to charity because it is too hard.
Finally, why take on Apple, but not consider the likes of Amazon. They have my card details, so could also make donations easy through a service.
Just to be clear: I am not against even more ways to donate and it would be great if Apple (and Amazon, etc) did provide this.
Andrew – you’re no doubt right – Apple probably don’t want to be in this business. But the point (that many who work in the non-profit sector are making) is that with dominance of a platform come certain other expectations. I expect that Microsoft are regularly inundated with good causes who want links built into the standard IE build. It’s inevitable. They’re still expectations, not obligations, but with enough pressure one can mutate into the other 😉
The question here is whether the transformational prize offered (that of raising vast additional donations) is sufficient to tempt Apple into the game.
It would be one hell of a legacy.
The key here is twofold:
– locking into a trusted payment mechanism that could be used as the gateway to giving cash to charities
– for this payment mechanism to be easily accessible across multiple platforms.
the iStore matches both of these. (I want to buy an app., so I just type my password to release £0.79.) Amazon is also in that arena, but Apple is driving repeat behaviour that could be harnessed to the benefit of a charity. (A good friend recently told me that if he had such an app., it would benkrupt him, which I think is a good thing in terms of how successful the app might be.)
Crack these two nuts in one fell swoop, and we’re laughing.
I can see both sides of the argument. I understand people’s frustration at not being able to build a donate button into their app. It ‘s their app, why shouldn’t they be able to do so. I can see Apple don’t want to open the door to a proliferation of donate buttons in apps when the mechanism of paying for the app exists so nicely.
I can see more merit in the argument that Apple should reduce their fee for charities from 30%. I wouldn’t argue for 0%, most charities accept the need for admin costs, it’s just that 30% seems high.
BUT, to be honest as a campaign this doesn’t float my boat because I don’t feel there is a shortage of ways to use your iPhone to make a donation. Text, web page, phone call, email pledge.
It feels more of a campaign that non-profits will wage but will it get widespread public support. Perhaps, but it isn’t exciting me this afternoon.
Paul
In 2006 New Philanthropy Capital estimated £450 million was wasted every year in Scotland because charities have no standard format for giving, or issuing challenge fund’s application procedures.
So you could multiply that figure by 8 for the UK.
Since then I have tried to ask Charity Commission, Institute of Fundraising, ACEVO and all the other “institutions” what is their response.
The answer is nothing. When push comes to shove, they all prefer the white wine, cosy dinners and talking amongst themselves. What they don’t really like is doing any work.
Your idea is perfectly sensible, completely disruptive compared to the charity industry’s legacy business model, and will work.
Whether you can take on Apple and the charity types at once, I don’t know. They are seemingly equally resistant to change if they can’t control it.