I should point out at this stage that I’m one of the co-founders of Guess2Give and I can hopefully add some insight based on users of the site.

Regarding setting-up 2 pages, I think its fair to say that some people will and some won’t won’t. With sporting events people fall generally into 2 categories: those that want to boost their online sponsorship (to raise as much as possible or to achieve their target) and those that do so many fundraising events that they feel they cannot setup ‘another’ online sponsorship page and ask friends for money.

Its quite simple to setup a sweepstake page (about 4 mins including the initial registration) so a Guess2Give page is quite a low-hassle way of achieving more money compared to say, tin-rattling/ washing cars/ baking cakes, so we’re hoping that people do use Guess2Give in this way.

For those people who have done the same event for many years or do a number of events each year, then Guess2Give means they can engage their friends in a fun and simple way without the ‘ask’ that is involved with online sponsorship. Of course online sponsorship continues to be highly profitable for charities and that’s why Guess2Give complements, and doesn’t aim to replace. Sponsorship will always generate higher amounts of giving in certain scenarios – but may be not with the group that are repeat eventers?

The point of cannibalisation is the most interesting. My points above cover some elements of that but we always believed that Guess2Give would attract new people and therefore generate a new income stream. The amazing news from initial usage is that a much younger demographic is being attracted to make guesses. An example is the high percentage of males in the 18-30 age range which are traditionally a hard-to-reach group and yet are clearly key users.

We won’t ever say that there won’t be some crossover between sponsorship and sweepstakes, yet a fundraiser’s close network that support them with large sponsorship amounts will continue to do so and we doubt will switch from a large donation to a making guesses. The benefit of Guess2Give is that those same people who sponsored may also make a guess as well as a fundraiser’s wider network that are attracted to guess whereas they wouldn’t normaly sponsor. The outcome is new income from both groups and new donors for the charity from the latter group.

As a final point that you also made, Guess2Give can also be used for fun scenarios such as the paper plane challenge or anything that can be measured, which also generates new income.

We have a long way to go, but the feedback and statistics are extremely posiitve.
Mark Chandler

I guess it’s a case of looking for opportunities where the donor can cut out a step when making the contribution.