After 12 months living in Sydney and with just 7 days until I get on a plane back to the UK; it’s clear out time. Now as much as I would like a Kindle I am sadly still in the analogue age of paper books, of which I accumulate 2 to 3 of a month. Therefore this morning’s mission was to get them down to Newtown and donate them to Vinnies.
As I wandered home I started to wonder what will happen to the books. I will never get to find out how quickly they sell and how much the charity will make from my donation. Or even more interestingly what that money will go towards. If only I could get a warm fuzzy feeling from tracking my donations online and seeing how I’ve made life better for someone else.
Obviously my mind then started running through all the different ways this could work from cataloguing at the point of donation, through stock control and sales, how the donator could track online… However the real question is what the “business” case would be for the charity?
Will it make more money?
They key take-away I got from Mary Portas‘ Queen of Charity Shops series on the BBC was that the charity shop is there to raise money, to achieve its mission. So tracking my donations might give me a warm fuzzy feeling, but does it make the charity any more money? I think it would.
So tracking my donations might give me a warm fuzzy feeling, but does it make the charity any more money? I think it would.
Mary also showed that the key to making money was donations. She overhauled the store itself, but also had to overhaul the donations. With high quality donations, that could fetch higher prices they could generate more revenue for the charity.
Bringing me back for more
Firstly if I can see the positive effect of my donation and get that warm fuzzy feeling, then I’m more likely to donate again and probably more regularly.
Beating my score
Secondly, when I go to donate again I will have seen what items make more money for the charity and probably try to beat my “score” from last time. Maybe I could even use the system to see how much certain items typically fetch and work out the value of my donations before I leave the house.
On a recent podcast the guys from Boagworld were chatting about how bringing game elements into applications can make it more enjoyable, but also help bring users back. Where on FourSquare you can earn a “Crunked” badge for checking in at 4 places in one night, you could instead earn badges for funding a hot meal, a goat or an education.
Widening the circle
Then there is the effect on my friends: I could publish my donation tally on Facebook and Twitter, let all my friends know what a good samaritan I am. Research shows that if your neighbours are trying to lead a greener life, it is likely to rub off on you in an attempt to keep up – so I figure the same should apply to my donating behaviour.
Maybe not for everyone
This might not be right for every charity shop. The necessary stock control system to support this might be too burdensome for some operations. But for anyone trying to build a lasting relationship with their donators to drive up the value of donations, I believe it would be a very powerful move.