Greek organizations could save tens of thousands of dollars in donations this year through a switch to a new crowdsourcing website, endorsed this week by the Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Association.
The site, crowdchange.co, does not collect fees from donations unlike other sites such as gofundme.com and instead only removes 30 cents plus 2.2 percent from each donation in credit card processing fees. Normally, crowdchange.co does collect a percentage fee. However, IFC and PHA received a deal eliminating this fee.
Jesse Scheinman, vice president of community programs for IFC, said, by his calculations, using the site could save IFC more than $30,000 in donations this year.
All PHC and IFC members can adopt the site for their chapters, and the two councils are talking to Multicultural Greek Council and National Pan-Hellenic Council about unifying all four greek councils’ philanthropy on crowdchange.co.
“Previously there was no centralization of philanthropy,” Scheinman said. “We think this puts it all in one place and sets a clear value statement for our organization by minimizing fees.”
Annie Gries, vice president of philanthropy for Sigma Delta Tau and an intern with crowdchange.co, brought the site to greek leaders’ attention. Scheinman said as soon as they heard about the site, it seemed like a no-brainer to switch, so PHC and IFC paid a membership fee to join.
Current fundraisers from different chapters are shown side-by-side on iu.crowdchange.co. Sydney Twiggs, vice president of community involvement for PHA, said this format could increase awareness of different councils’ fundraisers and possibly encourage donors to look at the philanthropy pages for multiple organizations.
“There’s so many greek chapters on campus and so many good things happening that not even other chapters are aware of, much less the rest of campus,” Twiggs said.
When people donate on crowdchange.co, they receive a code via email. If users add CrowdChange on Snapchat and send the company a photo with the code in the caption, an additional dollar is donated to the cause to which donors originally sent money. The dollar comes from CrowdChange or a corporate sponsor.
Between the saved money, extra cash from Snapchat and unity the site could provide, Scheinman said the switch to crowdchange.co is an innovation for the greek councils.
“Philanthropy is one of the best things our councils do,” Scheinman said. “This pushes it to the next level.”
In a previous version of this article, it said crowdchange.co does not collect a percentage fee from donations, only a credit card processing fee. However, crowdchange.co does collect a percentage fee from donations under normal circumstances. The Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Association received a special deal that eliminated this fee.
The IDS regrets this error.
