GMF#10 | Our Promise to Keep It 100% Free
TL;DR: Give.Asia started as a simple idea in 2009 but faced financial challenges. To survive, the team relied on grants, worked day jobs, and made the platform 100% free to encourage more people to be givers. Community support and growth have been crucial to our 15-year journey of making a positive impact together and we couldn't do it without you.
Give.Asia is a not-for-profit, charging no fees to donors or beneficiaries.
Early funding came from grants and angel investors.
The team transitioned to day jobs and worked on Give.Asia in their free time.
We made a promise to make the platform 100% free so more people can be givers.
Community support and growth have been crucial in sustaining our mission for 15 years.
Hello! 👋
People often ask us, "How much does Give.Asia charge, and how do you make money?" To explain, this is what we would say. At Give.Asia, we're not in it for profits; we're all about helping. We're proud to say that using Give.Asia is completely free. That means no fees for people who donate or for those who receive donations.
Some folks might be surprised by this because they might think we make money from the donations people give. Others might wonder how we manage to keep the lights on without charging fees. Well, let us tell you our story.
It all began in 2009 when we were students at the National University of Singapore. We had the idealistic notion that everyone can be a giver, and a kind professor gave us some money to turn that idea into a website called www.give.sg.
In the early days, we did have a small 5% fee on donations. This fee was there to cover the costs of things like processing credit card payments and keeping our servers running. However, in the first three months, we only had about $20,000 in donations. From that, we made just $1,000, and almost 80% of it went to pay credit card fees. That left us with only $200 to cover our server costs.
Our big break came when we joined some business competitions and won a $50,000 grant from the Young Entrepreneur Scheme in Singapore. To make that money last, we paid ourselves only $500 each per month.
After about two years of struggling to pay the bills, we faced a tough decision. Should we close down because we couldn't make enough money, or should we find another way to keep going? We chose to keep going, but we also needed regular jobs to pay the bills. So, we worked on Give.Asia during our free time, like nights and weekends.
At that moment, we made a promise to ourselves: Give.Asia would be our way of giving back and making the world better. To make it possible for anyone to help those in need, we decided to keep it 100% free to use. We believed that if people found value in what we did, they might choose to give a little extra to help us keep going.
Since then, more and more people have joined our community every day. Their trust and support keep us going, both financially and emotionally. We've grown over the past 15 years, and we've used the resources we've gathered to make our team bigger and create new tools and services.
Our dream is to have a world where everyone is a giver, and thanks to you, we're getting closer to that dream every day.
As we celebrate 15 years of this incredible journey, we want to make something very clear: Give.Asia exists and keeps helping people because of you and your kindness. Your ongoing support, both financially and emotionally, has been our guiding light through every challenge and success. We truly hope you'll keep standing with us as we continue this inspiring journey together. 🚀🤗🖐️
Thank you for being part of our story!