Interview: Blair from Shift My Gift
Giving a gift in someone’s name for a special occasion has become more and more popular as a way to keep “stuff” we don’t need out of our lives—and landfills.
Personally we love this idea and support it wholeheartedly. It not only adds “meaning to the greening,” as our tagline says, but there’s no packaging to be tossed and we don’t have to worry about how the gift was produced, how far it traveled to get to us or how to dispose of it when its useful life is done. What a relief!
Recently we came across Shift My Gift, a website where instead of buying a gift, you can choose to donate to any of 1.2 million non-profits! Surely there are one or two that even the most discriminating of recipients would be delighted to have you contribute to in their names.
The process is simple, the rewards for both the giftee and gifted, plentiful.
We asked Blair Souder, founder of Shift My Gift, to answer a few questions about the venture.
1. How did you come up with the idea for Shift my Gift?
I had been thinking for some time that I really did not need any more “stuff”- quite the opposite, I was/am in the process of simplifying my life. I then took a trip to Nepal and went trekking through parts of the Himalayas and got to spend a little time in Sherpa villages where people lived extremely simple lives yet seemed really connected and friendly.
I returned to the U.S. around Black Friday to the frenzy of holiday shopping and thought there must be a better way.
I started “shifting my gifts” and shortly thereafter thought it would be cool to start both a movement and a service to do the same, and basically create a new vernacular around how we can celebrate holidays: Q: “What do you want for your Birthday?”A: “I’m shifting my gifts this year.”
There is also a general movement out there towards “conscious consumption,” seeking more sustainable consumption patterns and behaviors.
2. I understand there are some costs involved with using Shift my Gift. So what’s the advantage of using Shift My Gift instead of asking guests to make a contribution directly to a non-profit of the recipient’s choice?
There are some small costs involved with Shift My Gift. Network For Good is our nonprofit partner who distributes the donations to any one of 1.2 million nonprofits in our database- they retain 4.75% of the donation (this includes all credit card fees), and Shift My Gift also charges a small fixed fee of $1.49 to cover our substantial costs of maintaining our database and fulfillment capabilities, which is more than offset by the savings in things like wrapping paper and gasoline. So overall the fees are very minor.
Certainly folks can make a donation directly and there is nothing wrong with that. Shift My Gift enables people to do it all in one place to multiple nonprofits if desired, so saves a lot of time and trouble to find websites, enter separate transactions, etc etc.
Most direct contributions to nonprofits wind up with credit card fees anyway so the difference is not as substantial as one might think. In either case, the entire donation is tax deductible.
3. How have you found giving a donation instead of a gift impacts the giver and the recipient?
For both the giver and recipient there is so much more meaning—the recipient gets what they really want and have a positive impact on the world, and the giver not only saves a lot of time and money looking for a gift, but is also assured that the gift is exactly what the recipient wants—and they get a tax deduction to top it off!
Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson are mother and daughter and authors of Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions for the Whole Family, and founders of Green Halloween®.
