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THEEDGE SINGAPORE | AUGUST 25, 2014 • EN3

ENTERPRISE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

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| BY AMY TAN |

When Zack Brown launched a project to raise US$10 ($12.45) to make a potato salad on crowdfund-ing site Kickstarter last month, Kristofer Rogers, CEO of Singa-

pore-based online fundraising platform Simply-Giving was one of the early donors to the fun cause. “I was very excited about the campaign because it demonstrated the reach of crowd-funding as a mechanism,” says Rogers. The potato salad campaign closed on Aug 3 with a total of US$55,492 raised from 6,911 back-ers, according to Kickstarter. Brown now plans to use the funds raised to host a free festival called PotatoStock in Columbus, Ohio to ben-efit the homeless.

While Rogers is a supporter of the cam-paign, he initially had reservations. “I was nervous about the campaign because you just need one fundraiser to misappropriate the funds and the authorities will come down hard on the provider and crowdsourcing indus-try,” he says. So, when he launched Simply-Giving in 2011, he ensured that the site was compliant with local legislation and chose to focus on working with non-profit charities. The first version of the site was launched with 30 charity partners in Singapore and Malaysia. A year later, a second version was released and as at mid-2013, SimplyGiving had increased its client base to 330 charity partners in 16 coun-tries. “We started with the big names like World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Singapore Cancer Society and now a lot of our users in-clude grassroots, local and community driv-en organisations,” notes Rogers. According to him, such organisations stand to benefit the most from a platform such as SimplyGiving as they often do not have the budget to hire IT personnel to create websites or launch dig-ital fundraising platforms.

Platform for non-profitsThe site allows non-profits to set up their own pages and raise funds for a particular chari-ty or cause. One of the most effective fund-raisers on the site was launched by the Singa-pore Red Cross to raise funds for victims of Typhoon Haiyan last year. “They were very visionary with what they did and they gave donors the option to donate to them directly or via SimplyGiving. Donors who opted for us could create their own mini appeal, which they could share with friends and families. As a result, a lot of corporates and individuals jumped on the cause and it be-came a donor’s cam-paign,” observes Rog-ers. Thanks to this feature, the Singapore Red Cross man-aged to raise more than $150,000 with-in a day through SimplyGiving. “Activity on the site went through the roof and tested our technology to the maximum,” he adds.

Data from SimplyGiving showed that two of the most common factors that encourage people to donate to a cause are leveragabil-ity and that they are being asked to donate. In that case, why do people shun street can-vassers with tin cans? Rogers points out that often, people are likely to donate to someone they know. “I’ve had people refer to street canvassing as running the charity gauntlet. People don’t donate to them because they are strangers. If someone you know asks you for

SimplyGiving lends non-profits a helping hand in their fund-raising efforts

Rogers: Online giving disrupts charitable giving in that it can make anyone a micro-philanthropist

a donation, you will be happy to give it to them. Some of them become the ambassadors of the cause,” explains Rogers.

The act of canvassing from family and friends is what SimplyGiving hopes to repli-cate on its platform. “We enable fundraisers to tell their own story and explain how they are connected to the cause. As soon as someone

donates, they can share the cause as well,” he says. In addition, SimplyGiving is the first res-

ponsive mobile optimised fundraising site. “This is very important

in a region where more than 90% of users ac-cess the web on their mobile,” says Rogers.

Donors are allowed to choose from 100 curren-

cies and multiple com-mon credit cards as well

as payment methods such as UnionPay, eNets, AliPay

and bank transfers. Users can also choose to donate with Pay-

Pal, even though Singaporean residents will no longer be able

to give to foreign charities owing to local legislation.

To safeguard the interests of donors, non-profits have to submit an application

to be on SimplyGiving. “We cherry pick our partners. We are fully compliant with

legislation and we benchmark this across the region. We require charities to provide infor-mation about their auditing, their community, and their social network and donor base. We cannot work with non-profits that are not ful-ly transparent because it is a big risk,” he says.

While the process may sound tedious, Rogers points out that this is not so as the char-

ities would already have all this documenta-tion. “We usually turnaround an application in as little as 24 hours to three days, provided the charities supply the necessary documen-tation,” he says.

In addition to transparency, he also encour-ages charities to put in place a stewardship pro-gramme and engage with their donors. “When I speak to charities, one of the questions I always ask is whether they have a stewardship or thank you programme in place for donors and none of them have it. They get a dona-tion and it goes to whatever they need it for desperately and the donor is not updated,” he says. “While we don’t enforce a compulsory stewardship programme on Simply Giving, sta-tistics show that if you reach out to your do-nors, you will raise more money because they know that their money is affecting change.”

Social entrepreneurship SimplyGiving applies a 5% service fee across the board for all donations. “The site sits very comfortably as a social enterprise because we adopt an e-commerce model and we have a service fee on donations,” says Rogers. “The traditional ways of fundraising such as gala dinners are an expensive affair for non-prof-its. Meanwhile, five cents for every dollar raised is compliant with legislation and pro-vides us with the funds to invest in our tech-nology and provide non-profits with a better offering,” he adds.

One of the new features Rogers hopes to roll out soon is donor genetics. “It’s like speed dating and matches donors to the causes they are interested in,” he says. To be sure, he does not see SimplyGiving as a tech company. “We don’t approach the business from a tech angle. Instead, we see ourselves as being disruptive. Online giving disrupts charitable giving in that it can make anyone a micro-philanthropist. In the old days, philanthropy was something for high-net-worth individuals,” he says.

SimplyGiving was recently named the region-al winner of the Community Impact Award for Southeast Asia at the Talent Unleashed Awards, a technology-based accolades programme de-veloped by global IT and talent recruitment and technology services specialist Talent In-ternational. The award was judged locally by Patrick Grove, CEO and founder of investment company Catcha Group, and Joel Noeh, head of Groupon in Asia-Pacific.

As Rogers sees it, the key to starting a suc-cessful venture is learning from experience. His first entrepreneurial endeavour was the launch of a youth magazine and an online tal-ent portal leveraging MySpace. However, this venture folded because his investment partners pulled out after three months. “It was from fail-ing that I learned so much about investment and cashflow and all these boring things that you have to know about running a business. We came out of it without any debtors and I learned how to protect myself from venture capitalists instead of being blinded by the ro-mance of being funded,” he says.

In 2008, Rogers helped to launch GoFund-raise, an online fundraising platform similar to SimplyGiving based in Australia. Through GoFundraise, he has helped to raise more than US$100 million for non-profits. Accord-ing to him, SimplyGiving has just completed Series A funding but declined to reveal more details. “In the past, you had to have a lot going for you to be successful. Now, you just need to have an idea and a will and it can happen and that, to me, is an exciting reali-sation,” he says.

SimplyGiving has about 330 charity partners in 16 countries

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