GiveGab, a volunteering management company based in Ithaca, New York, has gained great traction in its recently launched online platform supporting social entrepreneurship. Founded by Charlie Mulligan in 2011 while completing his MBA at Cornell University, its goal is to be a social network for volunteerism that offers a range of innovative features that includes assisting not for profit fundraising and increasing volunteerism. It now serves thousands of companies and volunteers, and has quickly grown to 15 employees on staff.
Only a few years ago, the company was just an idea of an aspiring entrepreneur who felt a passion for increasing volunteerism. It all started with a question. “Why don’t people volunteer more?”
According to Mulligan, 85% of people want to find a place to volunteer each year, but only 25% end up volunteering. In addition, Mulligan had heard that that people who regularly volunteer enjoy more happiness than people who double their salary. Mulligan was determined to find a solution, so he set out to create a place to influence volunteerism and make it much more accessible to those who are considering it.
“GiveGab is a place where volunteers can find each other and communicate,” said Mulligan. “It’s great for individuals, volunteer managers, and especially non-profits.”
The website was officially launched in 2013, and since then, the site is being used by over 4,000 non-profits and 70,000 volunteers, and the numbers are continuing to grow.
Use of the site is free for non-profits and individuals in order to make volunteering more accessible and be a better resource for the non-profits, but GiveGab finds other ways of making money. They profit from the universities and corporations that use the platform, and also receive a small processing feel from the donations made in fundraising projects on the site.
“We’ve been told our fee is small compared to other similar companies serving the same need, but non-profit companies use our site for almost free,” said Mulligan. “We’ve found a creative way to both help non-profits and make profits for ourselves.”
Fundraising is one of the key ways GiveGab helps non-profits succeed. Non-profits have incentive to raise funds on the site for their respective causes, so when a lot of money is raised, everyone wins. It’s a mutually beneficial scenario.
When designing the platform, the company first tried to listen as much as possible. To do this, the founders and first employees volunteered at a variety of non-profits, interviewed hundreds of organizers and volunteers to learn how to make the platform more responsive and efficient. Mulligan believes that their level of dedication to learning from non-profits what they feel is important is now setting them apart.
“At first, we didn’t focus on money. Our priority was all about learning what volunteers and volunteer managers wanted,” said Mulligan. “We are now seeing the results of our hard work and that has made us very optimistic about the future.”
To learn more about the company or to sign up to volunteer, visit www.givegab.com.
