I did my PhD in Health Technology and Data Science in Vancouver and am now looking for opportunities to increase my social impact. I recently graduated from AIMâs Founding to Give program, where we aim to increase our impact by building a for-profit company and pledging to donate parts of the exit value.
Patrick Mayerhofer đ¸
Karma: 122
Thanks for consistently using the GoodWallet and giving us so much helpful feedback all the time @Christoph Hartmann đ¸ :)
Hi Johannes! Thanks for the bug report, we are working on resolving that issue! I will reach out personally if I need more info.
And thanks for also underlining the importance of tax efficiency. It is something where we are actively exploring options. Unfortunately, it will take a while until we can find a solution that we can implement. But there are some potential solutions in the works at the moment :)
As a graduate from the Founding to Give 25Ⲡcohort, I would highly recommend anyone to look into this program. Not only did I learn a massive amount about building and growing a business, but also about how to think about a life with impact in general.
Amazing post Trish! đ
Thanks Rakefet! I listened to the NotebookLM, super cool haha. I will share this with our users if thatâs cool with you ;)
And I agree with all your comments. We will be working on adding these features in the app and hopefully also on the landing page soon!Hopefully we will soon see people sharing their links and QR codes on their pages. If you have any other ideas on how to incentivize people to do so, please reach out to me!
This could be a great use for a GoodWallet API integration!
There are multiple pathways that we can go, once we canât afford the transaction costs anymore. And I am looking forward for that problem to have ;)
We are currently paying standard PayPal transaction fees, but that will soon change when we implement a more cost effective payment processor. Some options for covering the transaction costs would be:Allow users to donate a percentage of their payment directly to the GoodWallet and educate/âvisualize how much would be the minimum to cover fees. That is a common solution of many non for-profits.
Put the money that temporarily sits in someoneâs GoodWallet account before being donated into a savings account. This will generate extra cash through interest and could potentially cover fees.
These are just some options, but we will consider options in more detail when we hit that roadblock :)
Totally agree! It was easiest for implementation at the moment to go with one currency. We will soon add other currencies to make it easier and more user friendly for people from different parts of the world :)
Thanks Karam for the support!
For sure, eventually corporate partnerships would be super cool to consider. The use of the API as Benjamin lays it out above could go into that direction!
This is amazing. I believe that it is important to get charity entrepreneurship-like projects going in many places around the world to build the best, most cost-effective charities with talent that is accustomed to local languages, cultures, and so on. I hope many people in the global north will spread the word as financing will be super important to keep this going. It wonât be perfect from the start, but if it gets the necessary time, rigour, and financial support, it can become super effective.
Great stuff VerĂłnica!
Thanks SK!
Amazing idea! That might help us improve the UX design!
These are great suggestions! We are currently reviewing opportunities to add more charities and the Rapid Response Fund could be a great way to go and might be interesting for people who like to save some of their funds in the GoodWallet for later donations.
Language considerations are definitely top of our minds!
Thanks for the suggestions VerĂłnica!
Thanks Paul! Twint is one of those apps where a collaboration could be interesting in the future, I agree.
We actually branded ourselves as the Buy Me a Coffee for a bit, but moved in a different direction before we started growing users. We are still interested in getting to know content creators and influencers that might be interested in increasing their positive impact by sharing their GoodWallet profiles. If you know any, please let us now!
Finding a way to allow for tax deductibility is on our radar and we hopefully can tackle that issue soon :)
Thanks Johannes! We really appreciate any help with spreading the word :)
Thanks for that comment Jason and for your donation to our GoodWallet :)
As for your questions: We are slowly getting to the point where we have built most of the features for a v1 (excluding UX design, which could be better). We are now slowly ramping up work for user growth, engagement, and retention. Having a native app will probably help for that, as it will allow us to send notifications. Currently, we are doing that with e-mail campaigns.
User growth, engagement, and retention is an entirely new field for us, but there are resources out there that we are learning from. If you know someone who might be interested in contributing some of their time or knowledge to this project, please let us now through a PM here or team@thegoodwallet.org .
Thanks both for the comments! In general, we have looked into other options, but so far couldnât find anything yet that uses âpay-me-back-with-impactâ behaviour to grow the giving network and increase donations on network size rather than higher donations per individual person. If you do know any similar apps, please let us know, Iâd love to learn about them and chat with the founders. Here a âquickâ summary:
The core problems we see in almost every donation app today
High friction. Too many clicks, sign-ups, or card forms before money moves.
No focus on effective giving. Most platforms highlight local or sentimental causes, not impact-maximised options.
Absent person-to-person network effect. Payments happen solo; nothing encourages viral âpay-me-back-with-impactâ behaviour.
How existing services stack up against those problems
⢠Givey. Great for small UK charities (no effective-giving defaults). Has no person-to-person network effect.
⢠GoodCoin. A white-label âdonate inside your banking appâ tool. Clever B2B concept, yet it relies on each bankâs marketing and creates no person-to-person network effect.
⢠RoundUp App. Rounds card purchases to charity; a different mechanic that remains entirely solo, so the network effect never kicks in.
⢠Charityvest. Modern donor-advised fund with zero platform fee, optimised for tax-savvy givers, not casual IOUs or gift cards between friends.
⢠PayPal Giving Fund. Huge volumes but lives inside merchant checkouts; donors canât pass balances to friends or settle IOUs, so no person-to-person network effect.
Why GoodWalletâs timing is right now
Digital wallets have crossed the chasm. Theyâre now the third-most popular way to donate, ahead of cheques.
One-click rails are commoditised. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal give us instant checkout flows that early pioneers had to build from scratch.
Social money norms are maturing. Sending âŹ10 on Revolut or Monzo already feels natural; letting that repayment default to charity is the obvious next step.
GoodWalletâs angle: remove every click possible, surface effective-giving defaults, and bake person-to-person network effects into everyday repayments and gift cards. The incumbents above do great work in their own niches; whatâs missing is a product that turns people into the distribution channel.
Thanks for sharing this!
I wanted to build on your idea by pointing folks toward an MVP weâve been testing called Good Wallet, which streamlines exactly this âredirect repayments into effective charityâ flow. You can see our original EA Forum post (May 8) - but here is a quick summary:
Why it complements your approach
One-click exposure: No manual charity lookupâyour debtor just clicks a link, and donates to your Good Wallet.
Smooth social flow: âOwe me $10?â becomes âHey, hereâs a link to do good together.â
Future potential: Our long term vision is to offer a public API that enables the use of the Good Wallet as a payment system. With that, any platform or service (think marketplaces, cost sharing applications etc.) can integrate charitable giving as a means of âpaymentâ.
Note: This is an early MVP. Weâre testing whether redirect-flows like yours gain traction at scale. If enough people sign up, give feedback, and actually use their wallets, weâll invest in polishing the UX, adding group features, mobile integrations, and an open API so any platform can plug in charitable tipping. Some early feedback also indicates that instead of using the mini-DAF functionality, we should let the Good Wallet user pre-select their favourite charity (one or multiple) and when debtors/âdonors pay into the Good Wallet, it will be directly forwarded to that charity.
How could you help, you ask?
If you have <5âŻminutes, please:
Check out our original post here.
Take our short survey here to help us gather useful feedback and finetune this concept.
Visit my personal GoodâŻWallet page and explore the functionality here. The more people that actually use the Good Wallet, the higher the likelihood that we will bring this concept to a post-MVP next level.
Would love to hear from anyone curious to give it a whirlâdrop feedback below or DM me after trying it. If the demandâs there, weâll keep building out the Good Wallet!
Cheers,
Patrick /â The Good Wallet Team
Unfortunately, we are currently bound to general paypal transaction fees, which depend on region, card type, and so on, and are a bit too high to make a $2 dollar payment worth it. But once we are a non-profit, we will have access to other, much cheaper options.