Now that we’ve emerged through the other end of the holidays, most people are looking for ways to scale back. And rightly so. But rather than feeling guilty about the occasional night out or skipped kickboxing lesson, why not attach a charitable donation to everyday extravagances?
Let us introduce you to Snoball, a new, event-based online donation platform. With more than two million charities in its database, Snoball lets you contribute an amount of your choosing every time a certain thing happens. For instance, every time you go out to the bar, you can send $5 to Last Call Designated Driving Services Inc. Or every time you check into the mall on Foursquare, how about a $1 donation to Toys for Tots?
The possibilities are endless. What’s more, they’re interesting. By incorporating social media, Snoball lets you schedule donations for every re-tweet you get on Twitter or for each time someone “likes” your fan page on Facebook. And if your Snoball should go viral, the website will measure your accrued impact with the Snoball Effect.
Here’s the best part: Snoball syncs with all the major sports leagues. So every time Evgeni Malkin scores a goal, it’s money in the bank for the English Skills Learning Center. In another brilliant stroke, Snoball also makes it possible to donate when a team loses. So if you were feeling saucy, you might pledge to donate $1 to the food bank every time the Philadelphia Flyers lose a game. (You know, just a suggestion.)
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Now, Snoball itself is not a charity. The internet start-up merely enables these transactions and takes a small sliver for the trouble, much like another of our featured Challenger Brands, Crowdrise.
“Because we use the ‘Internet-scale,’ 95 percent of donations get to the charities,” said co-founder and CEO Jeremy Kelley in an interview with the Huffington Post. “For the charities that don’t have a big IT staff…we can act as their internet fundraising arm.”
Use it as a motivator for your brand – “Like us on Facebook and we’ll donate to Squirrel Sanctuary Inc!” – or to assuage the guilt of buying yet another pair of shoes. Either way, it’s hard not to love Snoball’s ingenious marriage of social media and event-based giving. Not to mention it proves what we have suspected for a long while – when the Flyers lose, it’s good for everybody.
