Fundraising is not easy. Although there are folks who readily donate, most of them don’t like to donate. However, “What if donors got something out of it”? This was the thought behind Dare to Donate, a platform where you get your friends to vote for the dare you should do in exchange for a donation.
Dare to Donate was founded by Peter Bailey and Eric Whelan. Both of them worked for an innovation company called Independents United. Peter comes “from a background of development, making sites for Sky, ASOS, Diageo, Vue Cinemas” and Eric “has produced digital products for charities in the past”.
“We built Dare to Donate to combat donation fatigue.” Peter tells us. He adds,”People don’t especially like donating. So we wondered what would happen if donors got something out of it.” Peter and Eric then came up with an idea where “fundraisers get the public to vote for dares they set. Each vote costs a donation to charity. The fundraiser does the winning dare.”
“Our colleague ran the London Marathon and needed to raise money for charity.” Peter recalls. There were a lot of people running and she didn’t know what she could do to stand out. So Peter and Eric designed “a little app letting donors vote for her to do a dare which she would complete along the run.” It was a huge success and she raised money in thousands! This encouraged Eric and Peter to build Dare to Donate.
Developing a platform that people belonging to all age groups could use with zero stress was a challenge. “Fundraising is incredibly hard.” says Peter. “We wanted to revolutionise the way people think about it, and we wanted to inspire app developers to build the next generation of fundraising platforms.”
According to Peter, their idea needed to do three things to be successful –
1. It needed to create a story, and it needed that story to develop over time to stay fresh and shareable.
2. It needed to encourage repeated donations. A voting mechanism meant donors only got the dare they wanted if they kept donating.
3. It needed to be ultra simple to use. Peter and Eric spent months refining the UX before releasing it to the public, where they “refined it even further with help from our beta testers.”
On future plans, Peter says, “Currently we only support donations using the JustGiving platform. We plan to integrate other mediums of payment such as Stripe and Paypal.” Fundraisers from the UK are Dare to Donate’s target users.
Currently, the founders have no plans to monetise. “We haven’t ruled it out but for the moment it is simply a gift to the charity world.” Peter tells us.
Please visit http://daretodonate.co/