At a time when many are keeping their wallets closed, local college startup PocketChange reported its biggest Giving Tuesday to date.
The Denver-based microdonations platform processed more than 1,100 contributions on the international holiday on May 5, marking the company’s most impactful Giving Tuesday in its three-year history, said Carter Fite, business development manager and a senior at the University of Denver.
The company also matched all donations made to its recommended charities and donated upwards of $2,000 to the COVID-19-related non-profits it has vetted — World Central Kitchen, Direct Relief, the World Health Organization and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.
Fite credited the startup’s new mobile app for driving giving.
“If you’re going to be successful in capturing people right when they are feeling passionate about something, you have to meet them right where they at,” Fite said. “When we released on mobile, we basically enabled our customers to take action right when they are on Instagram and Twitter.”
PocketChange released its first mobile app in April, and nearly 1,400 users have since made donations in response to apps ranging from the Washington Post to TikTok. The company’s inspiration for going mobile is the same as what drove its initial creation.
In 2018, Americans gave $427 billion to U.S. philanthropic organizations. But just 10 percent of donations were processed online, Fite said, with most donors giving by mailing a check or wire transfer. PocketChange’s Google Chrome extension and mobile app aim to empower users to donate small amounts online, ranging from $0.25 to $2. The company pools donations received in $5 increments, which allow it to avoid paying processing fees and relying on any of the contributions made for revenue. Eventually, PocketChange hopes its current corporate partnership program and brand sponsorships will sustain its business.
But for now, users who read, say, an article about the lead chef of Jive restaurant in Denver donating meals to healthcare workers, can click the “Share” button native to iOS and PocketChange appears alongside options like texting or tweeting a link, but instead recommending charities for contribution.
The company’s team of researchers use GuideStar reports to vet non-profits recommended. Researchers have looked over 1.1 million charities, and only back 78 organizations that meet their standards for transparency, sustainability, diversity, ability to scale, and financial efficiency. Once researchers approve an organization, PocketChange’s natural language processing (NLP) systems scan the content and serve up relevant non-profits. Fite said the NLP learns from every contribution made to hone its suggestions.
“We set it up with this baseline of, ‘OK, I’m reading these words, what causes do they most relate to?’ And then every time something gets PocketChanged, it adds to that database,” Fite said. “The more users that use PocketChange, the stronger and more accurate our cause identification becomes.”
PocketChange transforms insight into action. As controversies swirl around the COVID-19 pandemic, Fite noted the app also transforms fake news into real change. If a reader feels charitable after reading an article that falsely extols the benefits of microwave radiation in cleaning masks, for example, PocketChange will ensure their donation still benefits a sound organization.
“It’s got a cool ability to kind of transform any article into meaningful change regardless [of whether] the article itself may not be completely accurate,” he said.
