Charity-donation app idea: (ETA: If you want to make this app, reach out. I’m open to paying for it to exist.)
The app consists of a gigantic, full-screen button such that if you press it, the phone will vibrate and play a little satisfying “ching” sound and light up sparkles around where your finger hit, and $1 will be donated to GiveDirectly. You can keep slamming that button as much as you like to thereby donate as many dollars as you like.
In the corner there’s a menu button that lets you change from GiveDirectly to Humane League or AMF or whatever (you can go into the settings and input the details for a charity of your choice, adding it to your personal menu of charity options, and then toggle between options as you see fit. You can also set up a “Donate $X per button press instead of $1″ option and a “Split each donation between the following N charities” option.
Why is this a good idea:
I often feel guilty for eating out at restaurants. Especially when meat is involved. Currently I donate a substantial amount to charity on a yearly basis (aiming for 10% of income, though I’m not doing a great job of tracking that) but it feels like a chore, I have to remember to do it and then log on and wire the funds. Like paying a bill.
If I had this app, I think I’d experiment with the following policy instead: Every time I buy something not-necessary such as a meal at a restaurant, I whip out my phone, pull up the app, and slam that button N times where N is the number of dollars my purchase cost. Thus my personal spending would be matched with my donations. I think I’d feel pretty good while doing so, it would give me a rush of warm fuzzies instead of feeling like a chore. (For this reason I suggest having to press the button N times, instead of making the app just contain a text box and number pad where you can type in a number.)
Then I’d check in every year or so to see whether my donations were meeting the 10% goal and make a bulk donation to make up the difference if not. If it exceeds the goal, great!
I think even if no one saw me use this app, I’d still use it & pay for it even. But there’s a bonus effect having to do with the social effects of being seen using it. Kinda like how a big part of why veganism is effective is that you can’t hide it from anyone, you have to bring it up constantly basically. Using this app would hopefully have a similar effect—if you were following a policy similar to the one I described, people would notice you tapping your phone at restaurants and ask you what you were doing & you’d explain and maybe they’d be inspired and do something similar themselves. (Come to think of it, it’s important that the “ching” sound not be loud and obnoxious, otherwise it might come across as ostentatious.) I can imagine a world where this app becomes really popular, at least among certain demographics, similar to (though probably not as successful as) veganism.
Another mild bonus is that this app could double as a tracker for your discretionary spending. You can go into the settings and see e.g. a graph of your donations over time, statistics on what time of day you do them, etc. and learn things like “jesus do I really spend that much on dining out per month?” and “huh, I guess those Amazon purchases add up.” Yes, there are plenty of other ways to track this sort of thing, but it’s still a nice bonus.
ETA: Only after writing this did it occur to me to look up whether this app already exists. A brief search turns up this list, and… nope, it doesn’t seem like the app exists. The stuff on this list is similar but not exactly what I want.
Good point. Maybe the most difficult part about making this app would be setting up the payments somehow so that they don’t get heavily taxed by middlemen.
I imagine it would be best for the app to actually donate, like, once every three months or so, and store up your dollars in the meantime.
I think this is a great idea. It could be called Give NOW or just GIVE or something. The single big satisfying button is such a stupid, great concept. The gamification aspect is good, but more importantly reducing the barrier to donating small amounts of money more often seems like a great thing to me. Often times the biggest barrier to donating more sadly is the inconvenience of doing so. Whipping our your phone, opening up GIVE and tapping the big button a few times encourages more donations and gives you that self-satisfying boost that pressing a big button and getting immediate feedback gives you these days. The social-cuing is a bonus too (and this seems far more adoptable than veganism for obvious reasons).
I’d be interested in working on this. I work in enterprise application development and have TypeScript and React Native w/ Firebase experience and have built and deployed a toy app to the Apple app store before (no real Android experience though). I’d be particularly interested in working on the front-end design if someone else wants to collaborate on the back-end services we’d need to set up (payment system; auth; storage; etc.). Maybe reply here if you’d be interested?
I would be interested in working on this with you. I’m in college for CS, and I have what I’m pretty sure is enough backend experience (and some frontend) to pull this off with you. I’ve never dealt with financial services before, but I’ve looked into payment processing a little bit and it doesn’t seem too complicated.
Anyway, if you’d like, DM me and maybe we can find a time to chat.
Yay! Thanks! I imagine the back-end services part is going to be the trickiest part. Maybe I should post on Bountied Rationality or EA forum looking for someone to collaborate with you.
Hey! I’d be interested in working on this. My suggestion would be to use Flutter for front-end (React Native is perfectly fine as well, though) and especially to utilize an API like Pledge’s one for back-end (as they’ve solved the tough parts of the donation process already and they don’t really have any service fees when it comes to this use case). Coincidentally, I have roughly 10 years of experience of hobbyist game design, so we could think about adding e.g. prosocial features and mechanics down the line if you’re interested.
Nice! You both should check out this thread if you haven’t already, and see if there are other people to possibly coordinate with. Also lots of good advice in there about the main difficulties, e.g. app store policies.
I’m aware of the thread and I believe that we’d be able to solve the policy issues. Using an existing API like the Pledge’s one mentioned above would be my strong recommendation, given that they indeed handle the heavy parts of the donation process. It would make dealing with the policies of the app stores a breeze compared to making the back-end from scratch, as in that case there would be a rather huge workload in dealing with the heavy (although necessary) bureaucracy.
It would be nice if we started coordinating the development somehow. I would start with a central hub where all the comms would take place so that the discussion wouldn’t become scattered and hard to follow. Maybe something like semi-open Slack or Discord server for more instant and spontaneous messaging and all the fancy extra features?
These all seem like great ideas! I think a Discord server sounds great. I know that @Aaron F was expressing interest here and on EA, I think, so a group of us starting to show interest might benefit from some centralized place to chat like you said.
I got unexpectedly busy with some work stuff, so I’m not sure I’m the best to coordinate/ring lead, but I’m happy to pitch in however/whenever I can! Definitely open to learning some new things (like Flutter) too.
Whatever you think is best! I don’t have anything to contribute to the development except vision and money, but I’ll check in as needed to answer questions about those things.
Charity-donation app idea: (ETA: If you want to make this app, reach out. I’m open to paying for it to exist.)
The app consists of a gigantic, full-screen button such that if you press it, the phone will vibrate and play a little satisfying “ching” sound and light up sparkles around where your finger hit, and $1 will be donated to GiveDirectly. You can keep slamming that button as much as you like to thereby donate as many dollars as you like.
In the corner there’s a menu button that lets you change from GiveDirectly to Humane League or AMF or whatever (you can go into the settings and input the details for a charity of your choice, adding it to your personal menu of charity options, and then toggle between options as you see fit. You can also set up a “Donate $X per button press instead of $1″ option and a “Split each donation between the following N charities” option.
Why is this a good idea:
I often feel guilty for eating out at restaurants. Especially when meat is involved. Currently I donate a substantial amount to charity on a yearly basis (aiming for 10% of income, though I’m not doing a great job of tracking that) but it feels like a chore, I have to remember to do it and then log on and wire the funds. Like paying a bill.
If I had this app, I think I’d experiment with the following policy instead: Every time I buy something not-necessary such as a meal at a restaurant, I whip out my phone, pull up the app, and slam that button N times where N is the number of dollars my purchase cost. Thus my personal spending would be matched with my donations. I think I’d feel pretty good while doing so, it would give me a rush of warm fuzzies instead of feeling like a chore. (For this reason I suggest having to press the button N times, instead of making the app just contain a text box and number pad where you can type in a number.)
Then I’d check in every year or so to see whether my donations were meeting the 10% goal and make a bulk donation to make up the difference if not. If it exceeds the goal, great!
I think even if no one saw me use this app, I’d still use it & pay for it even. But there’s a bonus effect having to do with the social effects of being seen using it. Kinda like how a big part of why veganism is effective is that you can’t hide it from anyone, you have to bring it up constantly basically. Using this app would hopefully have a similar effect—if you were following a policy similar to the one I described, people would notice you tapping your phone at restaurants and ask you what you were doing & you’d explain and maybe they’d be inspired and do something similar themselves. (Come to think of it, it’s important that the “ching” sound not be loud and obnoxious, otherwise it might come across as ostentatious.) I can imagine a world where this app becomes really popular, at least among certain demographics, similar to (though probably not as successful as) veganism.
Another mild bonus is that this app could double as a tracker for your discretionary spending. You can go into the settings and see e.g. a graph of your donations over time, statistics on what time of day you do them, etc. and learn things like “jesus do I really spend that much on dining out per month?” and “huh, I guess those Amazon purchases add up.” Yes, there are plenty of other ways to track this sort of thing, but it’s still a nice bonus.
ETA: Only after writing this did it occur to me to look up whether this app already exists. A brief search turns up this list, and… nope, it doesn’t seem like the app exists. The stuff on this list is similar but not exactly what I want.
How easy is it currently to make 1-dollar donations on a smartphone? Is there a way to do it for close to 0% fees?
You likely wouldn’t want to give an app store 30% of your donations.
Good point. Maybe the most difficult part about making this app would be setting up the payments somehow so that they don’t get heavily taxed by middlemen.
I imagine it would be best for the app to actually donate, like, once every three months or so, and store up your dollars in the meantime.
I think this is a great idea. It could be called Give NOW or just GIVE or something. The single big satisfying button is such a stupid, great concept. The gamification aspect is good, but more importantly reducing the barrier to donating small amounts of money more often seems like a great thing to me. Often times the biggest barrier to donating more sadly is the inconvenience of doing so. Whipping our your phone, opening up GIVE and tapping the big button a few times encourages more donations and gives you that self-satisfying boost that pressing a big button and getting immediate feedback gives you these days. The social-cuing is a bonus too (and this seems far more adoptable than veganism for obvious reasons).
I’d be interested in working on this. I work in enterprise application development and have TypeScript and React Native w/ Firebase experience and have built and deployed a toy app to the Apple app store before (no real Android experience though). I’d be particularly interested in working on the front-end design if someone else wants to collaborate on the back-end services we’d need to set up (payment system; auth; storage; etc.). Maybe reply here if you’d be interested?
I would be interested in working on this with you. I’m in college for CS, and I have what I’m pretty sure is enough backend experience (and some frontend) to pull this off with you. I’ve never dealt with financial services before, but I’ve looked into payment processing a little bit and it doesn’t seem too complicated.
Anyway, if you’d like, DM me and maybe we can find a time to chat.
Yay! Thanks! I imagine the back-end services part is going to be the trickiest part. Maybe I should post on Bountied Rationality or EA forum looking for someone to collaborate with you.
Go for it! I’m not on either of those forums explicitly, but happy to collaborate :)
Hey! I’d be interested in working on this. My suggestion would be to use Flutter for front-end (React Native is perfectly fine as well, though) and especially to utilize an API like Pledge’s one for back-end (as they’ve solved the tough parts of the donation process already and they don’t really have any service fees when it comes to this use case). Coincidentally, I have roughly 10 years of experience of hobbyist game design, so we could think about adding e.g. prosocial features and mechanics down the line if you’re interested.
Nice! You both should check out this thread if you haven’t already, and see if there are other people to possibly coordinate with. Also lots of good advice in there about the main difficulties, e.g. app store policies.
Thanks for the reply!
I’m aware of the thread and I believe that we’d be able to solve the policy issues. Using an existing API like the Pledge’s one mentioned above would be my strong recommendation, given that they indeed handle the heavy parts of the donation process. It would make dealing with the policies of the app stores a breeze compared to making the back-end from scratch, as in that case there would be a rather huge workload in dealing with the heavy (although necessary) bureaucracy.
It would be nice if we started coordinating the development somehow. I would start with a central hub where all the comms would take place so that the discussion wouldn’t become scattered and hard to follow. Maybe something like semi-open Slack or Discord server for more instant and spontaneous messaging and all the fancy extra features?
How about a private channel in the EA Anywhere slack workspace (https://join.slack.com/t/eavirtualmeetupgroup/shared_invite/zt-1vi3r6c9d-gwT_7dQwMGoo~7cU1JH0XQ)? We can also mention the project in their software engineering channel and see if anyone else wants to work with us.
If this sounds good, join the workspace and then DM me (Aaron Fink) and I’ll add you to a channel.
These all seem like great ideas! I think a Discord server sounds great. I know that @Aaron F was expressing interest here and on EA, I think, so a group of us starting to show interest might benefit from some centralized place to chat like you said.
I got unexpectedly busy with some work stuff, so I’m not sure I’m the best to coordinate/ring lead, but I’m happy to pitch in however/whenever I can! Definitely open to learning some new things (like Flutter) too.
Whatever you think is best! I don’t have anything to contribute to the development except vision and money, but I’ll check in as needed to answer questions about those things.