Twelve is the new Thirteen

I have ended the tyranny. Since Charitocracy day one, September 1, 2016, there has been an automatic 8.3% "tax" or "tip" to cover Charitocracy's overhead. A 13th month of contribution, essentially. We've used those funds to cover credit card fees, nationwide solicitation registration, web site hosting, software licenses, insurance, advertising, postage, inkjet ink, etc. But those days of mandatory tipping are over! $12 is the new minimum donation, with 100% going to winning charities.

Why now, Benj? Why ever?

I've been trying to put myself into the shoes of strangers. [Not literally, because if you're familiar with my feet, you know they probably wouldn't fit.] These strangers hear about Charitocracy from a friend, or see an ad on Facebook, or see me rocking a Charitocracy sweat jacket, running shirt, or coffee mug. They visit our web site, and then NOTHING happens.

One of my theories is this: they see a $13 donation where $12 goes to 12 charities. They think: scam alert! Charitocracy is skimming a buck off each $13 donor, and probably using it to charter flights to the Caribbean.

Not a bad theory. 59 cents of that $1 goes straight to credit card fees, but the remaining 41 cents would add up fast. Almost fast enough to cover our other expenses it turns out. But luckily we have donors whose employers match, or even double-match, their donations. So we've found ourselves plenty of breathing room for paying the bills while sending 100% of web site donations (and Facebook donations) into the monthly award pots for the winning charities. Still no Caribbean vacations, so clearly we have some kinks yet to sort out.

We appreciate each and every mandatoryincluded tip we've received from our early adopters during our 1st two years. You've paid for our setup costs to get up and running, and we're ever grateful. But from now on, these tips are entirely optional! You can go to My Account > Donation Change to switch to a non-tipping annual donation at any time. And new signups will not have this tip selected by default. It's an opt-in for all new donations. Maybe everyone will still choose to donate a "baker's dozen" 13 months worth every year, but this could be one less red flag for new donors who don't know us personally like many of you do.

In Other News

• We had a larger than usual monthly pot of $1753 for September winner Youth Pride Inc! That's thanks to $2 matches per new social media Like/Follow, as well as matches for each new/upgraded donation. Well done!
• We're continuing this promotion, so keep on inviting friends to join us or at least like our various social media accounts! Potential $8 in the October pot for follows: $2 each for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And then if one joins at the $12/year level, that's an additional $24 we'll match!
• Despite the busy month, huge gain in likes (over 800 now on Facebook), and big pot, we had fewer voters in September than usual. Combine that with a swing of only 2.5 votes between 3rd place and 1st, your vote would certainly have an impact in selecting the winner. Get out the vote!
• Just a few more hours to sweeten the pot for Youth Pride Inc. or to nominate a new cause for October. Looking forward to another great month!

Okay, so you've heard we just turned two, right? Key word: "We." This is us. Together we made it this far. Two years, 24 monthly winners later, we've distributed nearly $30,000! WE.

Growth report: 😭

I don't want to sugarcoat the growth situation. We gained some and lost some over the past 12 months, and ended up right where we were last September. Our generous donors opened their pockets wider, in some cases dramatically and overwhelmingly wider. But the donor count is just above 200 like it was on our first anniversary. I have yet to crack the code on how to turn advertising $ into new donors. Not for lack of trying!

We received significant major donations this year, along with employer matches, which the donors earmarked for attracting new donors. Experimental advertising has come out of these funds, and we'll continue learning the art and improving those efforts. But we saw some success last year incentivizing new signups and social media follows by releasing matching funds into the pot. So we'll try that again this year, using this same new donor attraction earmarked money. Without further ado...

Announcing return of $1 Likes

We just crossed the 600 Like mark yesterday. 615 at the time we went to press with this blog post. Each and every cumulative new like will get a dollar of matching funds tossed in the current monthly pot. So if you invite 100 friends to Like Charitocracy's Facebook page (instructions in this blog post), and 30 of them actually listen to you for once and do it, that's $30 extra for September's winner! Nice and simple. Additional Twitter or Instagram followers get the same treatment. We're at 60 and 116 followers on those platforms, respectively. This can add up really quickly, and we have plenty of matching funds to back it up. The goal is to get more folks tuned into Charitocracy so that we can over time convince some of them to pony up $13 and join us for real!

Also return of $1:$1 matching funds for donation increases

If any one you were on the fence about increasing your annual donation (or to switch to one of our new monthly plans), let me help pull you down and drag you to your wallet. If you decide, for example, to bump up to $5 per month, we'll throw an extra $5 per month, for a whole year, into the pot. Nudge, nudge. That fence is a lonely place. Added bonus, this doubling will be counted in your Giving Tree as a matching donation, as if it came from your employer. (If your employer also matches it, that of course gets counted, too.) You may not be too familiar with your Giving Tree, but read on to the Leaderboard section...

New this year: $2:$1 matches for new donors!

Every new donor's initial donation, whether $13 or $390, will get tripled out of the matching funds. I have a feeling incentivizing new donors in this way will cost less than acquiring them through advertising. And this money will go to winning charities instead of social media companies, another big win in my book! So be aware of this incentive when talking to friends about Charitocracy or inviting them over email.

Leaderboard coming...

All of my work trying to crack the social media advertising nut has deprived me of my true love: coding up new features and ways to streamline and push the envelope with Charitocracy. But one of these months I'll crank out the leaderboard where we can recognize extraordinary efforts by donors to grow Charitocracy. Not just in terms of their own donations, since many of us prefer to keep those private. But by recognizing donors' Giving Tree growth, which includes new donors they invite (or gift) into Charitocracy, we could bring a healthy competitive aspect to Charitocracy.

I'm thinking categories like these:

• Biggest Giving Tree
• Fastest Growing Giving Tree
• Most New Donor Recruits
• Most Generous Individual Donor (opt-in)

Your ideas are always welcomed, and may I say even critical to our success! So please reply to this blog post, to our social media accounts, or directly on our site.

Wait, no, don't stop! Keep that press cranking!

The first Charitocracy article ever, printed in actual ink no less, appears in the new issue of North Beach Sun. This is a quarterly magazine for locals and tourists in the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we live. We made it into the summer edition, their most widely read of the year for a beach magazine, I have to imagine?

On any given Friday on the Outer Banks, you can stroll into Waveriders Coffee, Deli & Pub in Nags Head to find local Benj Lipchak tucked away near the corner of the cafe, sitting in what he refers to as "the comfy chair" -- a cushiony throne complete with beige upholstery and two oversized arm rests that can double as small desks. Amidst coffee enthusiasts and nine-to-fivers on their lunch breaks, the young entrepreneur works tirelessly on his graduate school project turned passion: Charitocracy.

We were honored to have an editor of the local First Flight High School's Nighthawk News tell our story for North Beach Sun. Arabella Saunders expertly captures who we are and what we're all about. And Kati Wilkins's photo puts us right in our natural habitat. Waveriders is where Charitocracy makes its giant leaps of forward progress each Friday.

Thanks to Amelia Boldaji, editor of North Beach Sun, for running into me months ago at Waveriders, being curious enough to ask about Charitocracy, and make this story happen. She also encourages me to drink beer after a certain hour. You can probably imagine my violent protests.