In this episode of Insights Unlocked,UserTesting’s Sean Treiser sits down with Neeraj Ramesh, Executive Producer of Giving Experiences at Givelify, a mobile and online platform for charitable donations that has empowered over 1.5 million people to give more than $5 billion to causes they care about. Neeraj shares the story of Givelify’s journey from a simple idea sparked in church to a powerful tool reshaping the future of giving. Together, they explore the strategies and philosophies that make Givelify stand out, from leveraging user feedback to creating features that genuinely connect with the emotional and practical needs of donors. Neeraj discusses how Givelify listens to its users to develop features that foster trust and encourage consistent giving, all while balancing the needs of donors and charitable organizations. Key Themes: The Birth of Givelify: Givelify’s origin story is rooted in a moment of missed opportunity and inspiration, sparking the idea of a platform that would make charitable giving easy and accessible for anyone with a mobile device. User-Centered Design and Trust: Givelify puts donor trust at the forefront, emphasizing data security, transparent processes, and visual cues like familiar faces to help donors feel safe and assured in their giving. Emotional Connection in UX: Givelify’s approach goes beyond technical ease; they aim to create an experience that captures the “warm glow” of giving, ensuring donors feel positive and connected with each gift. Innovation in loyalty programs: Neeraj introduces Champions of Good, the first loyalty program in the giving sector, which rewards donors for consistent giving. The feature encourages engagement based on frequency rather than amount, supporting people’s desire to give at their own pace. Iterative development with user feedback: Givelify uses insights from UserTesting to understand both new and familiar users, continuously refining features to serve donors better. Testing has revealed valuable insights, such as the potential pitfalls of certain features like “Giving Streaks,” which needed careful adjustment to avoid discouraging users. Balancing stakeholder needs: Neeraj emphasizes the importance of prioritizing donors, even as Givelify works with a wide range of stakeholders, from religious organizations to nonprofits. Features are designed to empower donors while keeping the act of giving meaningful and fulfilling.
Chapter 1: What is the story behind Givelify's creation?
So I started growing the team around the engineering of our mobile apps. And then over time, started looking at things a little bit more cross-functionally. So we added not just the engineers, but also started looking at product and design and marketing and sales and customer support and basically all the things you would expect to take a product or a solution from concept to finish.
and all the different pieces that are needed to bring that to life. And so that's kind of what I do today, lead that cross-functional business unit. And yeah, at the end of the day, my job is to keep our donors happy. So when they're happy, I'm happy as well.
So you've been along for the entire ride, Neeraj, building it yourself at first and then growing the team. I'm curious what signals you sensed that it was time to grow. Was there a demand on one side of the market or the other? What was the engagement that you were seeing?
Yeah, that's a great question. So I think within the first three months, I believe we made or we raised about $100,000 in donations. And so very early, we did get signals back from the market that there definitely is a need for this. It's a pain point. It's an unmet need for people, especially like I mentioned back in 2014,
People had already gotten used to the concept of putting in credit cards online on mobile apps and just not having to deal with the hassle of carrying cash or writing checks. Now, typically, the The industry where we started or the sector that we focused on was more on the worship side of things.
So we started with churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, other places of worship, because typically they're a little bit slower when it comes to adopting technology. And so there was a challenge there where we had to make sure that, one, we were pitching this at the right time when they were ready to accept
technology in their organizations, and then two, making sure that their members were open to the idea or to the concept as well. And then once we were able to overcome those challenges, we definitely started moving more into the nonprofit and charity fundraising space as well.
But yeah, within our first year, I believe we started breaking even, which is not very typical, I know, for a lot of startups. So that was super promising. And yeah, that kind of gave us the momentum that we needed to keep going and really go quit our full-time day jobs and go in on this.
Yeah, that's very impressive. I love how y'all found your niche, your foot in the door, immediately found $100,000 in donations, and now you're over $5 billion. Really impressive stuff. On top of that, in 2022, Givelify received the prestigious Stevie Award for Best User Experience for its mobile app.
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Chapter 2: How does Givelify prioritize user feedback?
So that's some deep work that y'all have done to get into the minds of your users. Now, you mentioned before we started recording that Givelify introduced a new program that specifically was focused on enhancing digital giving that resulted in an increase in donations of more than 10%. Now, that's a big number when you look at the scale that y'all are touching.
Could you share a little bit about how user feedback led to that development?
Yeah, for sure. It's actually something that I'm super passionate about personally. So we call it Champions of Good. And it's the first ever loyalty program in the charitable giving space. So not too different from, you know, e-commerce loyalty or...
other programs that you may have seen or been a part of in the hospitality space or in the airlines, collecting miles and collecting and redeeming miles space. So similarly, we have a concept where we want to incentivize consistent giving among our donors. So we focus more on the number of gifts that you give over the course of a year.
I'm not really the dollar amount because financial situations may change or vary person to person. But what we really care about is that you're making that impact consistently. So whether that's weekly or biweekly or monthly, whatever cadence works best for you. We wanted to, you know, we really designed this program to
be able to appreciate and also celebrate the impact that you are making and make you feel good at the end of the day. Because it's very unique in the sense that with most other products and companies, you know, when you pay for something, there's a product or a service that you get in return, right? Like you buy something on Amazon and a package shows up at your door.
And when it comes to charitable giving, it's literally like you're giving your money away without the expectation of anything in return, right? And so... You know, the question we ask ourselves is like, what is that product or that service that we're providing for this money that you are giving away? And a lot of it is being able to show the impact that you're making, right?
That being able to hear directly from the organizations and the people whose lives you're touching or changing. But also we want people to feel good about what they're doing, right? And so we call it the warm glow, which is kind of, you know, this humiliation of positive emotions and feelings that you get when you do make decisions.
a charitable donation or a charitable gift and so yeah we test we test a lot when it comes to how we make people feel with our products and solutions so all the way down to the colors that we use in the app to the animations, the haptic feedback. Um, and we, we ask questions to a lot of them are open ended. Some of them are unprompted.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do new users face on Givelify?
So for example, we have this diverge, converge framework, which I've seen other companies use as well, but it's kind of like a, a double diamond approach where we diverge on the problem space and then converge there to make sure that we're tackling the right problems.
And so during that process, we're listening to our customers, we're doing the academic research, we're doing some market research as well and making sure that we've identified the right opportunity. So that's the first diamond. And then we do a similar diamond where we diverge and then converge on the solution space.
So that's, again, another place where we have different ideas and we build them into prototypes. We test them, make sure we're on the right track. And I think
Previously, we've kind of relied on real-world testing or field testing, as you may call it, to get this feedback from people where when we put out a brand new program like Champions of Good or a brand new feature or even smaller enhancements or optimizations,
We usually pilot it with, let's say, five to 10% of our user base, get some real world feedback, make some quick iterations, and then make sure that we're constantly improving or iterating on that. But I think where we've kind of shifted now is spending a lot more time and effort, even pre-pilot, making sure that we're doing these
prototypes and pretotypes and getting them in front of people earlier and doing a lot more validation testing before we even get something out into the market. And I think that's helping us reduce a lot of costs in the long term where we don't spend as much time in the pilot phase. At that point, we're just revalidating what we already know. And we just want to make sure that it's
you know, it's checking all the boxes that we expected it to check. And so, yeah, I think that's going to be, that's going to continue to be a primary focus for us. And then the other piece, I think, which you called out as well, is kind of that emotional loyalties side of things, you know, where it's like,
When it comes to loyalty, there's the rational side of things where people continue to use solutions or go back to a product because of previous experiences. Whether it's the cheapest option or it's the most convenient one or the safest or most reliable one, that's obviously a big component of why people continue to use products, but
I think the more exciting, but also the more challenging piece is how do you build that emotional loyalty where you really speak to the identity of someone, the core identity of someone, or they use a brand or a product to express their identity, right? And so for us, it's like,
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Chapter 4: How does Givelify build trust with its users?
And it's very transactional and really takes the joy out of giving. And so people, you know, miss giving. missed the act of giving. And so what we found is that people actually only less than 3% of people actually sign up for a current giving. And most people prefer to be reminded when they want to give. So whatever frequency or cadence that they choose, they'd rather
get a reminder and then go through the act themselves. Um, so they can experience those emotions that come with the process or with, with that, um, that practice of giving. And the second piece obviously is like, um, you know, you, you don't want to potentially, uh, overdraft or, you know, not have the money in your bank account.
And then the last thing you want is being charged fees for a donation, right? So they do appreciate that flexibility and control to change the amount if they need to. Because for a lot of people, especially when it comes to giving to their faith, sometimes it's not trivial sums of money, right? It could be up to like 10% of their income. So... Um, that's one, one example.
The other example is, um, donor covered fees. So a lot of organizations, they, they really tap into, or they really want to make sure that they get the, um, the entire donation, right? Because typically there's, there's a service fee, which is because of credit card processing fees. So I give a five, for example, Around 3% of your donation goes towards credit card processing and service fees.
So organizations, they're like, so if I donate $100 and they're getting only 97, they'll recommend to the donor that you should give 103, for example, so that I get the full $100.
But what that does from a donor standpoint is it moves you from that emotional mindset of I'm just giving money away and not expecting anything in return to now you're like in this more rational mindset where you're calculating the cost of this donation and trying to think like, is that $100 donation worth the $3 fee?
And making those kinds of calculations, which have been scientifically proven to decrease giving in the long term. And so, yeah, there's a battle sometimes trying to educate and help organizations see that which may seem like a good idea in the short term, but in the long term, things like recurring giving, things like donor covered fees, they're going to lead to a drop or decline in donations.
And so, yeah, I think at the end of the day, we're When we have these battles or challenges, we're always reminding ourselves of who our core or primary target audience is and making sure that we're doing right by them.
That's fantastic advice, even and maybe especially when you have such a wide variety of stakeholders. It's that much more important to focus in on where your impact is going to go the furthest and dig deep to empathize. Of course, had you not done the deep work of learning about perception around recurring payments and donor donations,
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