Hey everyone,
I’d love to get your thoughts on an idea I’m working on: a mobile app that gamifies charitable giving, encouraging users to donate $5 a day (perhaps a bit less depending on the target group) to high-impact charities. The goal is to create a daily habit of generosity, leveraging the psychological benefits of prosocial spending (as shown in Dunn’s Happy Money research) while driving significant funding to effective causes.
The Concept
Each day, users receive a push notification prompting them to donate. They can:
- Pick from three featured charities, rotating based on urgency/impact.
- Select any charity of their choice.
To reinforce the joy of giving, the app includes:
- Streak tracking & rewards (e.g., badges, milestone unlocks).
- Social proof nudges (e.g., "50 people in your city gave to this today").
- Monthly & annual impact reports (showing the collective impact of all users).
- Community discussions on generosity & effective giving.
Why Daily Giving?
Many in the EA community optimize for lump-sum giving, which makes sense for maximizing impact. But this app isn’t meant to replace that—it’s about:
- Building a stronger giving identity: Reinforcing generosity as part of our daily lives.
- Leveraging psychology: Studies show frequent giving increases happiness and generosity over time.
- Expanding the donor pool: Many people struggle to commit large sums but can easily justify $5/day.
- Providing an alternative to trivial spending: Instead of a daily coffee, you fund malaria nets, cash transfers, or climate solutions.
EA Alignment
While users could support any charity, the recommended options would prioritize high-impact, evidence-based causes, such as GiveWell recommendations, effective climate interventions, and global health initiatives.
Your Thoughts?
- Would this app be valuable to the EA movement?
- How can we optimize for real impact while keeping the habit-building benefits?
- Are there risks or unintended consequences?
I’d really appreciate your feedback—both from a behavioral economics perspective and an EA effectiveness lens. Thanks in advance!
Looking forward to your thoughts,
Joe
I love the idea of leveraging "streaks" for this! It might be a good moment to push something like this, with the foreign aid pause.
Sounds exciting!
Misc rambles I haven't thought about for long, in case they're helpful!
I personally find streaks motivating! One thing I like about duolingo is that you can earn back your streak by eg. doing extra language classes. I wonder if there could be other ways to get people to 'maintain their streak' even if they can't afford to/forget to donate on a certain day or month. I don't know what the valuable things would be but I imagine something that keeps them engaged and caring about donations. Perhaps it could be watching a short video about one of the charities/cause areas, or doing a short quiz, or sharing something on eg. instagram or something. Alternatively it could be watching x number of ads where the revenue then goes to the charity (no idea if this would generate meaningful amounts).
One thing I would be nervous about though is that if you're donating daily, it might feel like a much bigger part of your life and as a consequence a much bigger burden/sacrifice. Particularly if you have t choose where to donate regularly. I'm sure there are ways you could maybe mitigate that, but I think a way in which I find the 10% pledge useful is that I make the decision in a rational headspace and then try to just imagine I never had that extra money in the first place, rather than viscerally tracking what I'm 'losing' on any given day.
Framings where you're building towards a specific thing maybe seem like they avoid this. Eg. if we have an idea of how many chickens donating to THL saves, perhaps there could some kind of virtual field of chickens that you populate more as you donate, in a similar way to growing trees in the focus app 'Forest'.
Another idea could be something that just makes it quick and easy to donate if you feel a burst of empathy. Eg. if you're in a city and walk past someone homeless and then feel an urge to donate/give but feel angst about what's effective etc, or if you see an animal suffering and wish you could do something about it etc.
Personally, I know I'd rather make the decision of donating once, and forget about it, rather than having to decide every day. I know if I had a daily notification asking me to make a decision I would quickly get rid of it, as I find those sorts of things exhausting after a while. But maybe there's a personality of people who like these sorts of prompts and appreciate micro-decisions.
On the other hand, maybe some people are overwhelmed by the idea of donating $1500/year, but $5/day seems fine, so they'd be into this.
For people who like the sound of $5/day but would soon mute the notification, there could be a way of toggling a switch to automate the process of donating the 5 bucks, but maybe that's missing the point of your idea?
You'd probably need a way of getting around credit card fees, as I think these have a fixed price so making lots of small transactions isn't very effective?
Yes I worry about the pushes becoming a nuisance and losing their appeal. I'd want to to be creative as to how they come across and customizable in terms of frequency.
I think the gamificatjon social pressure and the community element could help with this. Imagine not wanting to lose your giving streak because you have a platinum giving badge that you would lose. Duolingo has loads of in app feature that encourage daily use but I can attest that even those can get annoying and eventually muted.
The fee avoidance is a must have. I'm still researching the best way to do it but for now my best idea is a built in API that routes to websites or giving platforms that allow donations without fees. Giving what you can, every.org, PayPal giving etc. That's not to say that the problem is solved but my first effort will be to solve that through partnership
I really like this idea! Personally, I am rather susceptible to gamification and tend to think of effective donations as a major "hobby"[1], so this is right up my alley.
One additional function that I believe would be really valuable is to be able to give gift vouchers to other app users. I like the general idea of donations-as-gifts, since it is often more valuable than the options and because it enables you to introduce friends and family to effective giving. However, merely donating in someone else's name can be a bit tricky, since it sometimes feels like you are just doing whatever you wanted to do with the money, and sticking their name on it as an afterthought. I believe that giving gift vouchers for this type of project would give the gift receiver more autonomy in deciding how to use the funds, and thus feel more like a genuine gift. It would also give them an opportunity to read and learn about a few different effective projects and decide what is most closely in line with their values. Moreover, giving through this app would ensure that they are not only exposed to effective giving once but repeatedly, thereby having a larger chance of becoming habit-forming. So it would make it much easier for effective donors to also share these ideas with others, and might be an effective way to increase the pool of donors.
Building even more on this idea, one could perhaps also use donation matching to incentivize even further donations. So rather than giving you X dollars, I offer to automatically match any donations you make through the app up to X dollars.
Finally, the idea of giving many small donations to different organizations might also be useful to help people become less attached to a single cause area and more dedicated to effective giving generally.
I wish you the best of luck with the project and look forward to seeing how it progresses!
With "hobby" I do not mean something that is trivial or non-mandatory, but rather something that I really enjoy spending my free time thinking and reading and talking about. So being prompted to learn more about it once a day would be more enjoyable than annoying.
Thank you very much for the super helpful feedback. I love the idea of giving donation credit as a gift. I've felt the same conundrum when donating on behalf of others where you're ultimately choosing for them where the money goes. Giving them the money then letting them choose the destination is a great fix.
Matching funds is also something I'd love to incorporate though the way I thought of it could be a corporate or larger donor could sponsor a challenge like when you hit 30 days of consistent giving your next five donations could be matched. Or to drive donations to a specific place: if 100 individuals give to this specific charity today then the sponsor will match the amount.
There's loads of potential to find ways to motivate others through 'bonus' donations. I would want to target people to support this program at a larger level who might be able to back the 30 days of consistent giving unlocks $20 of extra money to be directed by the user.
Would be great to continue brainstorming.
I also feel that the app would benefit from being able to educate the users about the three prompted causes each day. That way the giving is less robotic and more investigative. People who perhaps had not been exposed to FGM or the impact of malaria or climate change adaptation have a resource to expand their connection to philanthropy
I am happy to continue brainstorming! Here are a handful of quick ideas:
I also like the idea mentioned by Charlotte in another comment of building virtual rewards, similar to 'Forest'. This could help people stay motivated over time, but could also be really useful for dramatically visualizing the differences in scope, and incentivize users to aim for more impact. If you are building your virtual chicken farm, you will be able to clearly see the difference between a charity that is 10x as effective as another, and be properly motivated to maximize the number of chickens per donation.
Also, feel free to reach out to me by direct message if you want to bounce ideas. This is not my area of expertise, but I am happy to help if there is something I can do!
Hey Joe, this is a really interesting idea! I’d love to dig in more and explore how I—and the broader effective giving sector—might support it. I work as the Effective Giving Global Coordinator and Incubator at Giving What We Can, helping connect and support effective giving initiatives.
I think the best audience for this could be self-improvement enthusiasts—people who follow pop psychology and are drawn to giving as a way to boost wellbeing (e.g., Laurie Santos’ Happiness Lab listeners, Atomic Habits readers, etc.). Framing it as a daily micro-donation—“the cost of a cup of coffee” to a pre-vetted high-impact charity—could really work.
Would love to chat more. Feel free to book a time here: Calendly link or email me at lucas.moore@givingwhatwecan.org!
Thanks Lucas I've just put something into your calendly for next week. Look forward to catching up. Laurie Santos' science of wellbeing coursers course was my first exposure to Dunns research on happy money.