Welcome! Charitab.ly was conceived as a tool to make individual giving easier. The biggest issue that I have encountered when I consider personal giving is the difficulty in identifying worthy charities to contribute to. Two years ago while looking for an organization to make a donation to on my kids’ behalf, we discovered Heifer International. The group has a large footprint and makes impacts in a number of different countries by providing families with livestock that creates an ongoing income. The amount that we had chosen to give was too small to purchase one whole animal. Heifer ingeniously provided us with an option to contribute a portion of the total purchase price of an animal. As a result, our contributions purchased 1/10th of a cow, 1/10th of a goat, 1/10th of a llama.
As I thought more about this notion of fractional charitable giving, I was struck by how this solved my dilemma of never knowing which ONE charity to give my money to. Why not give smaller amounts to many charities that are focused on particular interest areas. I am passionate about Women’s education and clean water. If only there were some organization that could take my money and put it into a pool of charities focused on those areas of interest.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is similar in the way to many of us diversify our investments. We contribute to mutual funds of companies either broadly (unmanaged index funds) or in specific sectors of the economy (managed funds). Why is there not a similar mechanism to do this with charitable giving? I realized that I would love to select a “water fund” and “women’s education fund” and make regular contributions to these without having to do hours and hours of research to identify THE single charity. By enabling a recurring contribution, I would also help guarantee that the giving actually happened rather than facing the “I was gonna” dilemma. Why not just deduct from my paycheck a small amount that won’t be felt in my budget but actually ends up really moving the needle for the causes I care about?
Thus, Charitab.ly was born. We are working to build a platform for employers and employees to facilitate this giving. We are looking for investors and advisors. Please contact me if you are interested in learning more.