Israeli startup aims to make donating easier

LivinGift, a crowdfunding platform that started activities last week, aims to support impact enterprises

Picture of 'Safe Together' one of the social impact enterprises being funded via LivinGift (Courtesy)
Picture of 'Safe Together' one of the social impact enterprises being funded via LivinGift (Courtesy)

Israeli startup LivinGift, a crowdfunding platform that started activities last week, aims to make donating much easier in Israel and hopefully around the world in the future.

The goal is to support social and environmental impact enterprises in all sectors, from health to animal protection, giving people the opportunity to donate in an easy and transparent way.

The LivinGift.org platform is simple to use: people see the projects on the website and choose what they prefer to donate to. Then, they can inject the funds, with a minimum of $25 – or the equivalent of 100 shekels required, that the chosen social project receives as a zero-interest loan.

The innovative part comes now: the social project pays back the loan when it can, depending on the project at hand, and, once the loan is repaid, the donor can roll the donation onto a new social project, making the donation evergreen.

“We decided to create this platform to encourage the social progress and solve problems like the credit crunch. Indeed, banks hardly fund social impact enterprises because they see them as a high risk investment,” said Shiry Eden, LivinGift founder.

“People want to donate but the process is often not transparent. You don’t know what happens with your money. In this way, you know exactly where your money goes and who is using it,” added Eden.

LivinGift's Shiry Eden (Courtesy)
LivinGift’s Shiry Eden (Courtesy)

Projects are chosen by LivinGift following two criteria: they must have a social or environmental impact together with a sustainable and profitable economic model and fixed incomes to pay back donations.

Yet, all the projects are reviewed by the LivinGift’s public advisory council, headed by professor Meir Heth, a former chairman of the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange, Bank Leumi Le-Israel Ltd. and Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd. The advisory council checks all the projects to understand if they are legitimate enterprises or not, Eden said.

Currently only a few projects are supported and only NIS 10,000 have been raised by the platform, but Eden hopes LivinGift will grow over time and become popular in the donation world.

“On Internet there is nothing like LivinGift. Only 20 people have donated until now, but we launched the platform less than one week ago, so I expect to obtain better results as time goes by,” said Eden.

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