Action Button

Better Giving Studio identified this concept through the 2020 Reimagine Charitable Giving Challenge, an open innovation component of the program which sourced nearly 400 digital giving products and concepts. The concept summary below is inspired by and derived from the Challenge entry submitted to the Challenge.

Why BGS is Excited About This Concept

• Builds on a “moment in time” when donors are inspired toward action while reading an article, allowing users to immediately donate to an organization tackling the related cause.
• Simplifies civic action and giving using microdonations, opening up the possibility of leveling up giving behavior eventually.

The Opportunity

People’s relationship with giving can scale up or down dramatically depending on where they are in their lives. A study by Fidelity Charitable confirms this, citing that 95% of donors say they would give more under the right circumstances. Instead of adding another “to-do” to users’ already busy lives, Action Button is working to meet users where they are by aiming to turn every web-browsing opportunity into a giving opportunity.

The Concept

Action Button is still in a conceptual stage –this description covers how it will work. When launched, Action Button is designed to reach users in the moments they are primed to care about donating—when reading about related content. The goal is to make donating as frictionless as possible by putting the donation opportunity in front of them. 

As an Action Button user navigates the web, the plug-in would scrape pages for references to charities and issue areas. When a reference to a charity or relevant issue area appears, the browser extension would highlight it and present the user with the opportunity to instantly and seamlessly donate to a relevant charity. To use the plug-in, the user would only need to set up their payment method one time and then donate with a single click.

The advantages of using a browser plug-in for donations include: 

• The interface supports charities of all sizes 
• Enabling smaller, more frequent donations. For instance, users could preload their account to make microdonations without card fees eating up the donation.
• User data is secure. Users can choose whether or not to share their email with the recipient charity, avoiding the onslaught of emails that can occur after a first donation.
• Allows users to engage in giving behavior while avoiding additional communications in the form of texts or emails. User interviews identified a wariness around receiving additional inbound communications if possible. 

Through this innovation, Action Button would be able to: a) capture every donation opportunity that currently goes missed online, b) bring awareness to and enable donations to a wider range of causes, giving visibility and access to smaller organizations, and c) limit the donation choices to only the relevant ones at any given moment, thereby decreasing choice overload that can cause users to defer making a donation.