2011 October Meeting Notes - GiveCorps

GiveCorps is an online community where people can support local nonprofits and get rewards in return. At October's BmoreSmart meeting, Jamie McDonald, one of GiveCorps co-founders, and Peter Jackson, Vice President of Merchant Relationships, talked about the recently launched social enterprise.

Weekly, GiveCorps features five nonprofit organizations with a specific project to fund. Each day an email is sent to the GiveCorps subscriber list highlighting one of these projects. When a subscriber donates to a project, he or she can opt to receive a reward from one of the listed local merchants. The GiveCorps Foundation processes the donations and provides the tax receipts. In thirty to sixty days, the nonprofit updates the donors about the project's progress and success.

Jamie and Beth Falcone, GiveCorps' other founder, developed GiveCorp in response to two trends: large numbers of donors pooling small amounts to create large amounts and the online coupon trend. They want to see 500 people giving $25 a day, which would create a pool of about $5 million to support local nonprofits. This would put GiveCorps among the largest donors in Baltimore.

GiveCorps was launched mid-summer. The most important task for them has been building their subscriber list. A key part of building the list is having a presence at local events and marketing themselves as a way for college students to find out about new Baltimore stores, restaurants, and so on.

Since the launch, GiveCorps discovered that their initial assumptions overestimated how quickly the list would grow. To address the gap, they've been experimenting with more ways to spread the word, including sending a weekly email to highlight local volunteer activities and off-beat community events.

So far the largest donation has been $1,300 to Baltimore BORN; however, the average donation has been $40.