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I'd love feedback on this project - it's been a labor of love for a year trying to find the best charities in the bay area and making it easy for anyone to dona

I'd love feedback on this project - it's been a labor of love for a year trying to find the best charities in the bay area and making it easy for anyone to donate what they can without a lot of effort. Thanks!

blainesch 11y ago
The FAQ claims you need 50¢ from each donation to keep the servers running. Do you stop taking this money once you break even on server costs?
- harrisonmgordon 11y ago
  Server costs will certainly go down as Give A Dime reaches scale, but will always be necessary per user to account for bank transaction requests and other services. I will update the FAQ to be more clear on how we use this fee. We also intend to use those funds to continue growing and vetting charities in other communities.
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - harrisonmgordon 11y ago
    We asked a lawyer if we could be classified as a 501c3, but it didn't seem possible given what we do :-/. Instead, we're looking to be classified as a B-Corp in the future.
joshstrange 11y ago
Which CC monitor are you using? Inuit? Plaid? Or some other?
- harrisonmgordon 11y ago
  We are happy users of Plaid :)
- harrisonmgordon 11y ago
  I should also note that we never store cc transaction data - we request then delete it, only keeping the sum of the round up change.
balls187 11y ago
I like this idea. Are you storing bank credentials? Since you posted on HN: Besides the marketing fluff "state of the art encryption" what are you actually doing to ensure my credentials are secure? What prevents you from updating your TOS to be more ominous and adding a clause buried that allows you to inspect & store our bank transactions?
- harrisonmgordon 11y ago
  Thanks! We use Plaid as our bank connection API. We actually never see your bank account, so we can't store it. We also use Stripe for cc processing, and similarly do not store credentials, instead opting for Stripe to do it for us.
  - balls187 11y ago
    Gotcha, so the bank credentials are passed through to Plaid, which issues an access token, which can be used to re-authenticate and obtain new data.
    - harrisonmgordon 11y ago
      Exactly!
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Very nicely done. The only thing you might want to do is get on Stripe's ACH beta, and use an ACH for the transaction (saving the CC fees).
      - harrisonmgordon 11y ago
        I emailed stripe 2 days ago for access :)
  - slg 11y ago
    I may be overly critical here, but I don't think it is completely right to say in your FAQ that you don't store credentials "which means your sensitive information is safe and secure!" Sure, you don't store them. However you still ask for them and then have someone else store them on your behalf. That still leaves end users vulnerable to the exact same problems. The user could still experience issues specifically because they used your service. They wouldn't really care who is actually responsible if that were to happen, only that it was caused by using Give A Dime. You are responsible for your partners. Saying you won't do something isn't completely honest if you turn around and outsource that exact same activity to a partner.
noinput 11y ago
I like it. I was [almost] an Acorns user because I dig the model of simple round-ups, but am too impatient to wait for small change to make a difference in my personal savings alone. To that note, I know pennies go a long way especially when combined with others to who needs them. Feedback: Let users pick their own charities. I can tell by your FAQ you want to curate but people need to know their efforts are going to what they care about. I have personal experience with exactly this on a current startup, email me [in profile] if you want to chat more on it. Congrats on launching something that matters to you!
- harrisonmgordon 11y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! Yes - this is definitely a big philosophical discussion we are having. (Time for some sausage making) in California it is actually illegal for us to give money to a charity without having a signed contract in place (this is to protect consumers and guarantee that the money we promise is actually going to charities). This puts a bit of a hamper on enabling donations to all charities. We've opted for curated charities to keep compliant and also to help those new to charity donating make a big impact immediately. With that said, we want to expand the number of charities we support and would love to hear about great charities!
  - Drdrdrq 11y ago
    Then how about you let the users choose among your list of charities?
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      [deleted]
    - harrisonmgordon 11y ago
      You get to choose from our charity list which one you'd like to donate to - Let me know if I need to make that more clear on the website :)
      - 11y ago

blainesch 11y ago

The FAQ claims you need 50¢ from each donation to keep the servers running. Do you stop taking this money once you break even on server costs?

harrisonmgordon 11y ago
Server costs will certainly go down as Give A Dime reaches scale, but will always be necessary per user to account for bank transaction requests and other services. I will update the FAQ to be more clear on how we use this fee. We also intend to use those funds to continue growing and vetting charities in other communities.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- harrisonmgordon 11y ago
  We asked a lawyer if we could be classified as a 501c3, but it didn't seem possible given what we do :-/. Instead, we're looking to be classified as a B-Corp in the future.

joshstrange 11y ago

Which CC monitor are you using? Inuit? Plaid? Or some other?

harrisonmgordon 11y ago
We are happy users of Plaid :)
harrisonmgordon 11y ago
I should also note that we never store cc transaction data - we request then delete it, only keeping the sum of the round up change.

balls187 11y ago

I like this idea. Are you storing bank credentials? Since you posted on HN: Besides the marketing fluff "state of the art encryption" what are you actually doing to ensure my credentials are secure? What prevents you from updating your TOS to be more ominous and adding a clause buried that allows you to inspect & store our bank transactions?

harrisonmgordon 11y ago
Thanks! We use Plaid as our bank connection API. We actually never see your bank account, so we can't store it. We also use Stripe for cc processing, and similarly do not store credentials, instead opting for Stripe to do it for us.
- balls187 11y ago
  Gotcha, so the bank credentials are passed through to Plaid, which issues an access token, which can be used to re-authenticate and obtain new data.
  - harrisonmgordon 11y ago
    Exactly!
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Very nicely done. The only thing you might want to do is get on Stripe's ACH beta, and use an ACH for the transaction (saving the CC fees).
    - harrisonmgordon 11y ago
      I emailed stripe 2 days ago for access :)
- slg 11y ago
  I may be overly critical here, but I don't think it is completely right to say in your FAQ that you don't store credentials "which means your sensitive information is safe and secure!" Sure, you don't store them. However you still ask for them and then have someone else store them on your behalf. That still leaves end users vulnerable to the exact same problems. The user could still experience issues specifically because they used your service. They wouldn't really care who is actually responsible if that were to happen, only that it was caused by using Give A Dime. You are responsible for your partners. Saying you won't do something isn't completely honest if you turn around and outsource that exact same activity to a partner.

noinput 11y ago

I like it. I was [almost] an Acorns user because I dig the model of simple round-ups, but am too impatient to wait for small change to make a difference in my personal savings alone. To that note, I know pennies go a long way especially when combined with others to who needs them. Feedback: Let users pick their own charities. I can tell by your FAQ you want to curate but people need to know their efforts are going to what they care about. I have personal experience with exactly this on a current startup, email me [in profile] if you want to chat more on it. Congrats on launching something that matters to you!

harrisonmgordon 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback! Yes - this is definitely a big philosophical discussion we are having. (Time for some sausage making) in California it is actually illegal for us to give money to a charity without having a signed contract in place (this is to protect consumers and guarantee that the money we promise is actually going to charities). This puts a bit of a hamper on enabling donations to all charities. We've opted for curated charities to keep compliant and also to help those new to charity donating make a big impact immediately. With that said, we want to expand the number of charities we support and would love to hear about great charities!
- Drdrdrq 11y ago
  Then how about you let the users choose among your list of charities?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - harrisonmgordon 11y ago
    You get to choose from our charity list which one you'd like to donate to - Let me know if I need to make that more clear on the website :)
    - 11y ago