Description
Each of us enjoys giving to the people and things that we care about, but finances can often be an unwelcome restraint on our giving. On the flipside, fundraising and crowdfunding is notoriously difficult. As the first roundup crowdfunding app, Sixpence is on a mission to make giving and fundraising easier than ever before, and to in turn strengthen our communities.
Why Use Sixpence?
Sixpence is an app currently available on iOS devices (with Android and web app versions launching in June), which allows people to crowdfund from (and donate to) their communities through roundups on daily purchases. Basically, Sixpence allows you to roundup each purchase to the nearest dollar and give that change to causes created by your friends, family, and community members. Think GoFundMe, but without having to give anything upfront in order to begin supporting a need.
For those of us giving with roundups, we’ll never feel the cost of our giving, but as we see our friends’, families’, and communities’ causes reach their goals, we’ll certainly see the benefits of it!
This innovative platform enables those of us who care about these causes and people to contribute to them if we want to, regardless of our financial situations. Giving feels good. Anyone should be able to experience the rewarding feeling of helping make a change; Sixpence makes sure they can.
How Does the App Work?
Whether fundraising for/donating to a school, club, animal shelter, international nonprofit, friend’s medical need, or even a passion project, Sixpence’s landmark roundup giving feature is meant to make it easy for people to contribute to the causes and people we care about, bringing meaningfulness and generosity to communities.
For Supporters
A lot is often said about the ills of consumerism in our modern society. But hey, no need to feel guilty about your morning Starbucks if you’re also supporting an animal shelter with that purchase each morning, right?
Supporting a cause on Sixpence is easy! After you’ve set up your account, contributing your roundups to a campaign is as simple as opening their campaign page on the app and clicking that “Support” button! To set up your account, you’ll need to link a funding bank account and up to 5 cards to track roundups on (a process fully secured by Plaid, same as Venmo). Whenever your roundup total reaches $5, your roundup balance will be withdrawn from your funding account and sent to the causes you support.
Finding campaigns is easy too! The Sixpence home screen is a community map, so you can easily see the needs of those around you. After all, if you’re giving to causes on a daily basis with roundups, you’re probably going to want some of that to go to the people and things that you see and interact with on a regular basis as well! If you come onto the app already knowing what you want to contribute to, there is a search option also. Either way, you can easily open a campaign page from the map or by search, read their description, view media they’ve shared, and support them if you’d like to.
If there is a need or cause that you want to support with roundups, but they aren’t on Sixpence, refer them! Creating a campaign is easy and there are no prerequisites.
For Fundraisers
For those in need of crowdfunding tools, Sixpence is even better! After all, it’s much easier to ask your supporters and friends to contribute roundups on their daily purchases than to ask the for a donation upfront, and it has the added benefit of being a recurring payment, giving sustainability to the fundraising!
A campaign can be created on the Sixpence website or from the “Create A Campaign” button in the app. Campaigns can be for nonprofits or for individual fundraising needs. The choice is yours!
Standout Features
The one feature of Sixpence that’s most useful is roundup donations. However, there are some other features available now. Of course, if you’re donating roundups to a cause, you’re going to want to be able to track the amount of those donations. At any time, you can see how much you’ve donated to your supported campaigns each month of the year. You can support up to 5 campaigns at once, so no worries about having to switch between needs as they arise.
Besides tracking roundups, you can also cap them if you’d like, in case you have any worries about your roundups adding up to a bit more than you feel is wise to be donating right now. Caps are set for each month and can be changed at any time.
If you need to turn Sixpence off for a little bit, or just pause tracking on one of the cards you’re using, that’s simple enough as well. You can pause roundup withdrawals or turn off tracking for any linked card at any time.
Additionally, the Sixpence team has announced a whole slate of added features that will be releasing over the summer and the fall, including the ability to challenge friends (à la Fitbit weekly step challenges), leaderboards recognizing the most loyal donors for campaigns, and social media integration. Basically, Sixpence is becoming the place to be in order to routinely support and keep updated on the things you want to support in your community and beyond.
With each morning coffee you buy, every grocery run you make, and every little monetary indulgence, you could also support campaigns for your local school, your friend’s volunteer trip, your cousin’s medical bills, and the animal shelter you volunteer with. It’s that simple. There’s never been an easier way to be a helpful member of your community.