Change Round Up: Proof Positive That Every Little Helps!

One certainty in my world view is that people mean well. They may not always actually do well, but most people try to be a positive force for change in the world.

Giving to nonprofits is a powerful way that people try to make their positive mark. But lots of people give less than they might actually want to because they might not be able to afford a donation that they feel matters, or they may just not get around to it in their lives of work, schlepping kids to t-ball, and the like.

Change Round Up is a phenomenal concept that connects nonprofits and retailers in a collective effort to get billions of small donations from consumers -- donations they can afford and are very happy to provide.

It works like this. You're buying something, and the bill is 43.11. The web site asks you if you would like to round up the change to the nearest dollar and give the difference -- 89 cents in this case -- to one of the charities that the retailer chooses to offer as options. According to their info, Change Round Up sees donation attach rates of up to 70%.

But what good is 89 cents??? Well, actually the donation is 80.1 cents because Change Round Up charges a 10% fee to run their systems, pay their people, and make a little dough. Well, 80.1 cents doesn't buy much, but millions or even billions of 80 cent donations add up to real money.

My Keep the Change Savings account with B of A is proof positive. I've had it for about three years and have something like $2K as a result of rounding up bills and saving the difference.

Here's their Tech Crunch 60 second pitch:

As you heard, their vision is not for just online retailers. In fact they hope to expand their model to catalogers and other categories of the hundreds of billions of transactions in the US every year.

The retailer wins with a warm and fuzzy factor.
The consumer winds because they get to give in a way that works for many people's lives.

The nonprofits win by growing new revenues and beginning to form relationships with new donors.

And Change Round Up makes a good profit with an eminently reasonable 10% cut. For perspective, 10% is a LOT less than it costs to raise money -- even in major gift programs.

I wish I had a louder megaphone to support this company. Cuz this makes me smile.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.