CASE STUDY: GIVE AS YOU LIVE

1. Introduction

In the first round of SBC 2023, researching and learning about a social enterprise with a similar business model to WeShare would give our team many valuable and crucial insights into the factors that we need to reflect on and improve to enhance our own business and increase our social impact.

Therefore, WeShare has chosen Give as you Live as our team’s case study subject. Give as you Live is a social impact business offering innovative fundraising products that enable people to raise free funds for charities and allow charities to get easier access to donations. This study will show the results of our team’s research and how we have linked the knowledge learned from the SBC101 course “Principles Of Social Innovations” to our analysis. 

2. Problem & Root Cause

2.1. Problem

It can be seen that social organizations continuously put considerable effort into seeking donations to operate as the funds are not always sufficient and sustainable. 

In addition, while the environmental and social issues that need solving are already abundant and pressing, Covid-19 and the crisis in Ukraine have worsened the scenario by severely affecting the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, disrupting progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Private donors and businesses are likely to be called upon to fill funding gaps and charities need to work out how to best direct their limited funding for a greater impact. 

2.2. Root Cause

We apply the Iceberg model to see the root cause that Give as you live identifies: Ineffective methods in raising sustainable funds in England as donors do not have frequent charitable giving.

3. Mission Statement & Orientation

The mission of Give as you Live is to provide charities with a variety of innovative fundraising solutions that allow their supporters to raise free funds for them. It aims to become the market leader and industry standard for innovative charity fundraising in the UK. Give as you Live has stated to have “helping charities” at the core of its business. 

As its business activities are orientated to serve the aforementioned social mission, Give as you Live is a mission-centric firm. Give as you Live’s orientations are (1) expanding the network of partners to cover every consumption need of its users and encourage them to donate from every daily consumption; (2) promoting fundraising pages with challenges of supporters to develop funds as well as branding for charities and social organizations.

4. Solution

4.1. Products 

Give as you Live is a free fundraising platform for charities in the UK. The platform allows its members to choose how they want to give back to charities, from generating free donations by shopping online to creating fundraising pages and making direct donations.

Give as you Live offers personalized fundraising solutions that include 3 main products: Give as you Live Donate, Give as you Live Online, and Give as you Live Instore 

1. Give as you Live Donate

Give as you Live Donate offers a fast, simple, and secure pack of services to charities with different fundraising needs:

• Direct one-off donations and monthly repeat donations: Charities collect direct donations via Donate Buttons and QR codes.

• Donations from fundraising events: Charities can also create Campaign Pages for fundraising events and encourage supporters to set up their individual Fundraising Pages to collect funds that will tie into the charity’s page. Each fundraiser can support up to 5 charities.

• Corporate Fundraising Tool: Charities can help their corporate partners raise funds and drive their CSR and ESG initiatives. The Corporate Fundraising Tool allows corporate partners of charities to set up dual branded Campaign Pages, and Fundraising Pages, collect donations and utilize the matched funding facility to raise funds for the partner charity. Charities and their partners can access an in-depth reporting system to track their shared goals. 

• Bespoke project service: Charities are provided with an in-house team of experts to help with generating new fundraising ideas, initiatives, and donation-raising events. 

• Free marketing tools including QR codes and posters.

2. Give as you Live Online

Give as you Live Online provides members with access to 6,000+ online stores including John Lewis, eBay, Booking.com, and Sainsbury’s,… Once a charity has registered with Give as you Live, they can create a branded webpage where their supporters can sign up to start raising free funds for the charity on their daily purchases. And when registered members shop as usual, a portion of their online purchases will be donated automatically to the charity of their choice. From buying new clothes or booking holidays to switching insurance and ordering office supplies, there’s a free donation to be raised on almost every purchase.

There is no cost to the charity or its supporters; the funds generated are paid by the commission Give as you Live gets from online retailers. Charities are also provided with ready-made Marketing Toolkit assets and Reporting and Administrative support.

3. Give as you Live Instore

Give as you Live Instore gives members the opportunity to raise free funds when they shop instore at a wide range of high street retailers, supermarkets, and restaurants. Consumers use shopping cards to give donations.

4.2. Business model

1. Affiliate revenue model

Give as you Live adopts an affiliate scheme. Retailers pay the company a commission for referring members to their sites, and the commission is passed on to a charity of the consumer’s choice.

2. CSR, ESG, and B Corp promotion 

Give as you Live reaches retailers, wholesalers, and corporations across the UK, ​​supporting their CSR, ESG, and B Corp initiatives with our online charitable fundraising platform.

5. Market 

5.1. Market size

Give as you Live supports the UK (including Whales, Scotland and Ireland) charities, local schools, churches, CSR, ESG projects, and non-profit organizations in a wide range of fields. Until now, it has connected with more than 4,000 charities and social organizations (in a total of 488.731 one), had partnership with 6.000 retailers, attracted over 400,000 donors, and raised £24.944.528.

5.2. Customer:

Give as you Live customers are retailers (in fashion, electricals, food & drink, beauty, and child-care products…) both online and in brick-and-mortar stores, insurance companies, hotels, flight ticket or booking agencies, gift stores… Most of them are UK, Scotland, Whales, Ireland, or international merchants. They have to pay Give as you Live commission for Affiliate Marketing. 

5.3. Competitor and Positioning:

Donating is a popular culture among English people from time to time. According to CFA World Giving Index 2022, Give as you Live was ranked 5 in terms of the nation with the highest percentage of adults donating to charities and social organizations (65%). Not to mention, through shopping and debit/credit cards are 2 forms of donating that generate the largest donation. Therefore, it is easy to understand why online fundraising platforms are popular and influential in the UK. Although all of them are driven by social impacts, they compete with each other to build and develop the most convenient and easiest-to-use platform for both users and partners. 

• Competitors of Give as you Live Online: Quido (UK), and TopCashback (USA)

Users of Give as you Live can donate to the charity through online shopping, offline orders, or payment for insurance, flight tickets, hotel rooms… (not just by shopping in brick-and-mortar stores like Quidco and TopCashback)

Competitors of Give as you Live Donate: JustGiving, Enthuse, CAF Donate, GoFundme,… (There are still many online fundraising platforms in the UK but they aim at a specific field or size of the charities)

Give as you Live platform costs the fundraisers and organizations no setup or monthly fee to create fundraising pages, and campaigns, and promote their activities (which are requirements of Justgiving and Enthuse)

6. Growth strategy

6.1. Charities and Social Organizations

1. Insight: 

• Want to expand the fundraising form.

• Need an easy-to-promote and convenient online platform.

2. Strategy: 

b.1. Encourage charities and social organizations to be informed, take the initiative and be supported

• Be informed: Effortless Marketing

Give as you Live focuses on developing its website to equip charities and social organizations with all kinds of information they need to decide on cooperation. The information covers available stores, the percentage of the order value that would be transferred to them, the total amount of money raised, successful projects, different ways to donate as well as terms, policies, and benefits they would receive.

With the website, Give as you Live can gain credibility and trust from charities and social organizations as well as approach the less popular ones.

• Take the initiative

After reading the information, charities, and social organizations can register for free to appear and raise funds on Give as you Live website. 

• Be supported

Give as you Live provides charities and social organizations a marketing toolkit (including How-To Guides, Get started checklist, Ready-to-send emails, Social media posts, Website buttons, QR codes, and Pre-prepared fundraising page…), financial reports of their funds and also tips and guides for successful campaigns. By helping charities and social organizations increase users’ awareness, Give as you Live makes them more willing for a modern fundraising platform and thus, develop their funds.

b.2. Make the most of charity data and donors

Give as you Live updates the list of 40,000+ charities along with a brief introduction of those charities and social organizations on the website. 

Even when those charities have not registered to raise funds officially, donors can still make donations to them, and Give as you Live will invite them to corporate. 

Thanks to the detailed websites and list of charities and social organizations in the UK, Give as you Live can save time in finding fundraisers, sending corporate proposals, and persuading them to develop partner relationships.

6.2. Donors

1. Insights

Donors lack motivation or forget to donate.

2. Strategy: 

b.1. To increase users/donors

• Through media campaigns on charities and social organizations’ websites, social media pages along with emails, visitors are attracted to Give as you Live’s website.

• Award users if they successfully invite friends to sign up.

• Provide exclusive offers on the website: shopping vouchers, discount codes, and deals for new customers of certain stores.

b.2. To retain donors

• Donation reminder added to searching tools (if users accept).

• Users can set the ‘monthly donation’ mode.

• From a donor to a supporter: Donors are allowed to open a fundraising page by themselves for an event, activity, challenge, or quiz… and their funds will be transferred to selected charities or social organizations.

6.3. Merchants

1. Insight

Merchants desire to expand the market and have customers growth by being socially responsible.

2. Strategy

• Raise consumers’ awareness about the CSR, CSV, and ESG of merchants.

• Cooperation form: Affiliate Marketing.

Give as you Live increases brand awareness of merchants by introducing them on the website, social media pages, and promoting their current special deals or sales. It also updates how much they have raised.

7. Readiness

7.1. Product

The Give as You Live Online app is available on iOS, Android, and the Web. A free Donation Reminder is also available on Chrome Extension. Users can choose from one of 40,000+ UK charities, and start raising free donations when they shop at 6,000+ top retailers.

7.2. Business

To date, Give as you Live has connected with more than 40,000+ charities and social organizations (in a total of 488.731 one), attracted over 400,000 donors, and raised nearly £25 million for thousands of deserving causes, from multinationals to local volunteer-run causes.

7.3. Resources

Give as you Live is a member of the Fundraising Regulator and it gained a huge network of 40,000+ charities to support through its services thanks to its relationship with the Charity Commission for England & Wales, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, or the Charity Commission for Northern Island.

7.4. Awards

Give as you Live has been recognized as a leading fundraising platform at multiple Institute of Fundraising award ceremonies. In 2014, Give as you Live won the Award for Most Committed Company to the Sector and Best Digital/Technology Partner (Donor Facing) in Fundraising Awards.

8. Typology of social entrepreneurship

With Give as you Live, its typology is Social Constructionist. 

To be more specific, Social Constructionists create and operate ventures which resolve social issues that are inadequately addressed by existing organizations or governments (Zahra et al, 2009. This is also what Give as you Live did. By providing an innovative fundraising platform that allows people to donate directly or via their purchases at stores partnering with Give as you Live, this organization has transformed and diversified the donating habits of users and provided additional funding sources to social organizations and charities, which are often dependent on external financing and may be prone to financial hardships. These were the problems that organizations and the government could not fully address before.

Moreover, it is clear that the needs that Give As You Live identifies and pursues are focused on social wealth, which matches with the purposes of a Social Constructionist (Zahra et al, 2009).

9. Conclusion

Give as you Live offers a creative solution to the ongoing difficulty of fundraising for social organizations and charities. Give as you Live makes it simple, quick, and secure for charities to receive donations by using a personalized fundraising platform. It is positioned to dominate the UK market for creative charity fundraising by utilizing technology and collaboration, all while making a beneficial contribution to society.

Give as you Live‘s dedication to providing charities with a range of fundraising options that will fulfill their various needs, donors with flexible ways to donate, and businesses with CSR/ESG promotion is indicative of its mission-centric philosophy. 

Give as you Live offers three main products through partnerships with roughly 6,000 UK retailers: Give as you Live Donate, Give as you Live Online, and Give as you Live Instore. Each of these products is intended to give supporters the freedom to decide how they wish to help charity. 

     10. Reference

Climate Action Roadmap (2019). The UK Retail Industry. British Retail Consortium. https://brc.org.uk/climate-roadmap/section-1-context/12-the-uk-retail-industry/#:~:text=The%20retail%20industry%20in%20the,were%20worth%20%C2%A3439%20billion.

Dobbs, Clark, Wilding, Lipscomb, Harrison, and Smith. (2010). UK Giving 2010: An overview of charitable giving in the UK, 2009/10. Charities Aid Foundation  and National Council for Voluntary Organizations.  https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/uk-giving-2010_101210.pdf?sfvrsn=9519f440_4

The Fundraiser. (2011, November 4). Social enterprise: London vs Vancouver. Charity Choice. https://www.charitychoice.co.uk/the-fundraiser/social-enterprise-london-vs-vancouver/181

Give as you Live, https://admin.giveasyoulive.com/pdf/workwithus_charities_giveasyoulive.pdf

Give as you Live Donate, https://admin.giveasyoulive.com/products/give-as-you-live-donate

Give as you Live Instore, https://admin.giveasyoulive.com/products/give-as-you-live-instore

Give as you Live Online, https://admin.giveasyoulive.com/products/give-as-you-live-online 

Jones, I. M. (2023, March 28). Facts about charities in 2023. Charity Digital. https://charitydigital.org.uk/topics/topics/facts-about-charities-in-2023-10064#link5 

Mansi, L. (2019, May). Top Ten Charity Fundraising Websites. The good web guide. https://www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk/lifestyle/website-reviews/best-shopping-sites-roundup/top-ten-charity-fundraising-websites-to-help-you-r/20632

“An overview of charitable giving in the UK, 2009/10”. (2009). Charities Aid Foundation  and National Council for Voluntary Organizations. https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/uk-giving-2010_101210.pdf?sfvrsn=9519f440_4

Schweppenstedde, D. F. (n.d). Key challenges and opportunities facing the charity sector. Charities Aid Foundation. https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/blog-home/charities-blog/challenges-and-opportunties-facing-charity-sector 

Thorpe, L. (2014, May 15). ‘Give as you live’ plugin makes charitable giving an everyday thing. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainability-case-studies-give-as-you-live-plugin 

“UK Giving 2009: An overview of charitable giving in the UK, 2008/09”. (2009).  Charities Aid Foundation  and National Council for Voluntary Organizations. https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/uk_giving_2009.pdf

“World Giving Index 2022: A global view of giving trends”. (2022). Charities Aid Foundation. https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/publications/2022-publications/caf-world-giving-index-2022