The Every.org team collaborates on ideas about how to expand its giving platform and better serve its members. (Photo courtesy of Every.org)
Two software engineers are harnessing the technologies of social media companies to power a surge in charitable giving. “Our goal is a more generous world,” says Tina Roh, who launched Every.org in May 2019 with Mark Ulrich.
Every.org is a platform that connects donors and nonprofits and manages donations so that nonprofits can spend less time fundraising and maintaining donation websites. Any nonprofit can create a profile on the platform, which uses optimization tools such as machine learning and data analytics to make constant improvements to user functionality and donor transactions. “All those things are very common in the tech sector but are out of reach for a lot of nonprofits,” Roh says.
Funding from individuals and organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Canadian tech billionaire Garrett Camp’s Camp Foundation covers operational and staffing costs and allows Every.org to provide all its services for free.
The cofounders’ respective engineering backgrounds—Roh at Snap Inc., parent to the messaging app Snapchat, and Ulrich at social media company Pinterest—gave them the skills to design a platform that, like social networks, encourages online interactions and community building. Donors can see which nonprofits their friends are supporting, comment on what inspired them to make a gift, and share these comments on other social media platforms.
Donors also can explore charitable organizations by cause or location. “The more people use it, the better the ranking algorithm will become, and then it will be super easy to find nonprofits they care about,” Roh explains. With a team of nine—including several software engineers and designers—Every.org uses A/B testing to discover which online features work best in encouraging monthly donations.
Because Every.org acts as an intermediary, the platform makes it easy for nonprofits to receive complex assets—such as stocks, donor-advised fund grants, and cryptocurrency—they might otherwise lack the technical capacity to accept.
“We’re seeing a growing number of donors interested in donating cryptocurrency and nonprofits interested in accepting it,” Ulrich says. Crypto donations appeal to younger, tech-savvy donors, and, as assets under Internal Revenue Service guidance, they are not subject to tax. “As long as we’re seeing significant increases in the value of cryptocurrencies and as long as the tax structure stays as it is, there’s going to be a market for people who have amassed crypto wealth and want to deploy it for charity,” says Jessica Love, a managing director at the consulting firm Arabella Advisors.
However, several obstacles deter most nonprofits from accepting cryptocurrencies. First, they are extremely volatile. Crypto gifts demand immediate decisions on whether to liquidate or hold them. There are also legal and accounting complexities. As with other assets, digital gifts for which a deduction of more than $5,000 is being claimed must be appraised for their value. And while informal accounting recommendations exist, the rules are still in progress. “Small nonprofits trying to figure all this out may feel it’s not worth it,” Roh says.
Every.org manages all this on nonprofits’ behalf. After receiving a crypto donation, it immediately sells it via US brokerage service Coinbase and transfers the proceeds to the intended nonprofit in dollars. This minimizes volatility risks, since the currency is only held briefly, and relieves nonprofits of the need for installing the software required to set up and manage a crypto wallet (a digital service that stores digital currencies and manages transactions securely).
“If we had our own wallet, our operations team would have to receive the crypto and liquidate it,” says Jennifer Xu, US head of development for Epic Foundation, a nonprofit using Every.org. “That might take time, and it’s complicated tax-wise if the initial crypto appreciates in value. So for Every.org to do it automatically is a huge benefit.”
Crypto’s heavy carbon footprint, however, is harder to remedy. In their creation, some crypto currencies consume the same annual amount of energy as entire countries. Rather than lose out on these gifts, Every.org accepts crypto donations in the same way that it would accept a gift of stock from an oil company. Yet Roh is optimistic that environmental concerns will drive the crypto market toward “proof of stake” currencies, which are more energy efficient because they do not rely on the advanced cryptographic puzzles used in mining currencies like Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, the team is focused on helping expand the next wave of philanthropy by experimenting with giving incentives, analyzing what motivates donors, and using technology to create an ever more seamless flow of charitable gifts to good causes. “The digital generation are establishing their giving habits,” Roh says. “We want to create an experience that’s comparable to everything in their digital realms.”
Read more stories by Sarah Murray.