[jawns]

I _love_ the idea of getting a daily email that tells you about a worthy nonprofit that you might not otherwise hear about, and this system makes it dead-simple to make micro-donations to each charity.

However, I _hate_ the idea of donating to a black box. True, Dollar a Day publishes its criteria for selecting nonprofits, but those criteria are highly subjective. And, according to the FAQ, there's no way to opt out of donating to a particular featured nonprofit that you don't want to support. Heck, even if you cancel your monthly "subscription," your money will still go to all of the nonprofits that are in the queue for the rest of the month.

I understand the organization's decision to make things simple to start out, but I hope that it soon offers a way to opt out on a charity-by-charity basis (it could be as simple as a link in the daily email), and pro-rated refunds so that if you decide to stop donating on Day 1 of the month, you're not on the hook for days 2-30.

[aganders3]

An interesting take on this would be each day having to say "nope" to the nonprofit if you wanted to skip it. Make it an opt-out donation each morning (or a chosen time).

You could defer all the "no" dollars into a pile so the user could add a bonus dollar in the same way for another day.

Edit: I think you added this to your reply already! I love the idea, though.

[joeteplow]

Hey! founder of goodst.org here...

To solve this exact problem our model is a bit different. Our daily email features one cause and outlines two charities addressing the problem in a different way.

(Ex Cause: breast cancer Charity 1: Research Charity 2: Support for survivors. You can choose to donate to either of those or if you don't like the cause of the day you can rollover your donation to the next day.

Rollover as much as you like :) We have a few users rolling over 10 days in a row until they hit a cause that resonates with them.

[jawns]

I like your idea of being able to defer a dollar and then donate it to another charity you like more. That way, you're still donating a fixed $30/month, but you can distribute it more to your liking.

[iLoch]

I think what he was more talking about was having an invisible balance. Every month you have $30, and if you choose to opt out of a payment one day, that just means you'll have $31 for the next 30 days. And now that I've actually thought about that, it doesn't make much sense - since you're only donating 1 dollar a day. Maybe you could choose to "add my credit to today's payment", or maybe they just allow you to run your account for longer after you choose to discontinue your subscription (but that is sort of a disincentive to continue subscribing for people who commonly choose to skip payments.)

[Someone1234]

I both agree and disagree.

On one hand I agree that it would be nice to opt out of charities you disagree with. However I think in doing so it would destroy "Dollar a Day's" USP.

To me the USP of "Dollar a Day" is: Completely hassle free donating at an affordable cost ($30/month) which gives you almost endless positive feedback (i.e. every day you're reminding of why you're a "good person").

As soon as you start adding complexity then the USP changes from "completely hassle free" to "something I have to check every single day." Plus people will have to grasp how the whole skip system works (e.g. if I skip a day, is it still $30/month? If it is then where does that $1 go? What if I skip tons of days? What if I don't redistribute that $1 by the end of the month, where does it go, etc).

So I agree with your point, but I disagree that "Dollar a Day" should implement it. Instead they should stick to their USP and make very sure they don't mis-fire on the charity selection front (e.g. "Today is a $1 donation to the Republican Party," "Today is a $1 donation to Susan G. Komen," etc).

[btown]

People read countless mailing list digests, site updates, etc. every day. On the spectrum of "hassle-free," even if something's not all the way over at "no action needed," it's still a vast improvement for it to be at "action only needed when I really disagree with today's charity choice."

[dnautics]

on the UI front, you could make it as simple as a 'swipe left/swipe right'.

[briandear]

Hot or Not for Charities! Awesome idea!

[kenrikm]

Why not give the person several choices each day - but default to the main choice if they don't modify it? then rotate between the choices (yesterday's #2 is today's #1)

[publicfig]

This seems like a great solution. It deals with the dollar that day so you don't end up with a backlog or an inconsistent amount of donations.

[joshrotenberg]

A halfway point for them might be to allow donations only for the categories you select. Right now they have "Education, Health, Economic Development, Arts & Culture, Environment, and Human Rights." Opt in/out of categories and then somehow distribute your monthly contribution equally across that month's charities that match your selected categories. I'm not sure if a charity is exclusive to a category, though, so maybe it doesn't focus quite that well.

[freehunter]

I would subscribe to an app that sends you a daily push notification of the charity of the day, with an option in the app to donate your dollar or not. Automatically donating my dollar isn't something I would sign up for.

[lotharbot]

Completely agreed. I don't want to have to opt out of a full month just because the charity featured on day 27 is objectionable. I'd much rather be able to say "send my dollar for thus-and-such charity to thus-and-such other charity instead."

A useful feature might be the ability to opt out by category or keyword. Maybe I'm not interested in animal charities, or maybe abortion is against my religion, or maybe I don't trust any charity with the word "global" in its name for some petty reason. Whatever it is, I need to be able to opt in to funding the 29 charities I'm cool with and opt out of the one I don't like.

[jacalata]

Since they're a nonprofit, they could simply offer the option to have that days dollar go to them instead.

[ddlatham]

That sets up a perverse incentive for their organization however.

[eru]

Might not be a problem, if they are in it for the long run.