What happens to your $20 donation?

Ambedkar wants to put his siblings through school!

Donors often ask what percentage of their donation is used to fund our operational expenses. The answer, amazingly, is zero.

I’ll use the following post to show you how this is possible, and to give you an in-depth look into what happens to your money from the moment you donate, to the moment you receive your impact story.

Initial Donation

SeeYourImpact will not take a cent from any donation you make on SeeYourImpact. The only part of your donation that won’t go directly to the charity you’ve selected is a percentage taken by financial institutions (e.g. credit card or PayPal fees). For example, on a 20 dollar donation made through PayPal, .74 cents will be taken by PayPal, and 19.26 will go the charity you’ve selected. We are careful to factor in these fees when setting a price for each gift, to ensure that the amount the charity receives is sufficient to purchase the gift you selected.

Provide a tip

During the checkout process, you have the opportunity to provide an additional “tip” for SeeYourImpact. These tips, along with larger private donations, are the two primary ways we fund the costs incurred in running SeeYourImpact. Amazingly, 87% of our donors make this optional “tip!”

What happens next?

When you click the donate button, two things happen instantly: your donation and optional tip is received by SeeYourImpact and the charity you selected is notified of your donation. By crediting your donation to each charity, this removes any lag time in the distribution of your gift. The charity can immediately get to work in the field and select a recipient for the gift you donated. Within two weeks of your initial donation, the partner charity will upload details of the recipient of your gift. Periodically (usually every two to four weeks), SeeYourImpact sends a check to each field partner in the total amount of donations credited for that period.

A real life example

The way this process works with one of our field partners, the Blind People’s Association is as follows. When a donor purchases a Braille kit on our website, the donation and optional tip is transferred to SeeYourImpact, and BPA field staff are notified of this donation by email and credited the dollar amount of the gift. Because the demand for Braille kits at BPA is high, field staff are able to quickly distribute this Braille kit to a recipient, and then upload details of this recipient. This impact story is edited by volunteer editors in the United States, and then posted to the SeeYourImpact website. The donor is notified of their pending impact story by email, and the connection is made.

Conclusion

At SeeYourImpact, we understand the value of transparency, and want you to be clear on the process we use to create this one-to-one connection. Additional information can be found on our Concept page. Please leave a comment if you have any questions!