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Hi, Just5moreminutes

I'm the founder of Guess2Give so I thought I'd add to what's already been commented.

Womble is correct that our fees are higher due to the regulations that we have to abide by: gambling legislation, HMRC, age ID & UK residency fees as well as the card transaction fees. Despite all this bureaucracy and legislation the structure of each £3 guess is as follows:

1st guess, new user: £2.01 (inc Gift Aid) to charity, 50p prize fund, remainder in fees (listed above & our operating fee). This would only ever happen once as a new user.

1st guess, registered user: £2.28 charity, 50p prize fund, remainder in fees as above

2nd, 3rd 4th etc guess within the same transaction: £2.50 charity, 50p prize fund, remainder in fees

We have 117 charities on board including Cancer Research UK, Macmillan, Marie Curie right through to some sub £100k turnover charities. The feedback from the smaller charities is that they like us because we don't charge a fee which Just Giving does on a monthly basis, and Virgin charge as a setup fee. The charities never pay us a 1 penny.

Since launch we've had some great results which show that we're attracting new people to give. In some cases, people have a Just Giving page and near their event they setup a Guess2Give sweepstake as this attracts a wider group of people who would never give you a larger donation - such as your work colleagues, Facebook friends etc. Other people have said they didn't want to ask friends for money again via Just Giving and saw this a fun way of generating something for charity without having to have such a  big 'ask' of their friends. Finally, people are setting up fun events such as how quickly can I eat 3 mince pies, guess the weight of the cake etc which can't be done on Just Giving, so this generates new money for charities.

We don't aim to compete with Just Giving. We're a game and completely different. Guess2Give is a bit of fun that brings in money from people who wouldn't normally support you ... and 67% of people who win doinate some or all of their winnings back to the charity which is also Gift Aid'able

I hope that help clarify but I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Cheers, Mark

Hi everyone.

I'm the founder of Guess2Give and was contacted by Chaz about this thread.

I'm happy to answer any questions about Guess2Give and respond to the points above if you feel it's appropriate.

The one which appears to be the main issue is that Guess2Give is a for-profit company, which is correct. Over 70% of the money that goes through our system goes to charities (including the winings which mover 70% of people donate back) and the majority of the remaining money goes to 3rd party providers such as age and UK identification (necessary to adhere to gambling laws to ensure everyone is over and UK based), address checks, HMRC fees, gambling commission fees, payment merchant fees and payment transaction fees.

Our aim is to generate millions of pounds in new revenue from this new source of income for UK charities via our model of very low margin, very high volume. Of course we're nowhere near the volume required to be self sustainable yet as we only launched in April but so far we have over 100 charities (inc Cancer research, Marie Curie, Macmillan, Save the Children) that use our service for free (no sign-up or monthly fees like many services) as they recognise that creating online sweepstakes for people to use generates new income. This new income is proven by the majority of our users being younger than a normal charity supporter, therefore it provides the opportunity for long-term value for the charity if they can engage with those new supporters.  Even if they don't, then the additional income is more than they would have generated previously.

Of course, develpoing and implementing a new concept that doesn't exist anywhere in the world is costly to overcome issues with gambling, HMRC, charity regulations etc and gaining everyone's approval takes time and money, not to mention the technology platform.

I hope you don't mind me responding to this thread and shedding light on some of the issues raised, and, as I said initially I'm more than happy to answer any questions about Guess2Give if you feel it is appropriate.

Mark