People are coming together and realizing the importance of social giving as the epidemic continues to impact more and more lives globally.

With shifting demography, people's perception of donations and ways of making changes are also evidently changing. Traditional methods are becoming obsolete, and transparency is being questioned more than ever.

Today, we would like to introduce you to Omise's long-time partner, Socialgiver, an innovative donation platform that brings donations closer to home through a revolutionary way of giving. Over the years, two companies have been working closely together to improve the platform's accessibility by refining a suitable payment gateway solution for its target markets.

The beginning — a thrive towards sustainability.

Launched in 2015, Socialgiver is a fundraising platform that wields two lifestyles — shopping and donating — together in the forms of an online deal website and a smartphone application to create a novel alternative of giving back to the community.

Its origin traces back to 2011, when the severe floods hit Thailand, impacting millions of lives nationwide. Initially, help immediately rushed in from all directions. However, once the media coverage decreased, the support began to thin out as well.

As they dig deeper into the issue, the co-founders pinned their aim toward building a mechanism that provides support and exposure for volunteers working on the ground more continuously.

Getting to the root cause

Thai culture is essentially charitable. Unfortunately, the current structure of the Thai social sector doesn't provide enough for small-to-medium organizations to sustain themselves adequately.

There is rarely any channel for them to share their stories with potential givers, which often results in a vast proportion of the donation pool going to a limited number of well-known charities.

This structural problem, plus only the minority of people actually donating regularly or increasing the amount, has kept the help from sufficiently reaching those in need. And Socialgiver's solution for this, which may sound unthinkable, is to utilize the power of Thailand's substantial e-commerce markets.

Innovation meets donation

In 2020, Thailand landed itself as the second-largest eCommerce market in Southeast Asia. This fact confirms that there is plenty of cash circulating in the cloud. Hence, the question is how to adjust the flow so that they can also create social impact with each penny they spend without sacrificing their lifestyle.

The platform's Shop & give model comes in. It combines donation and shopping, which were two separate pipes, into one by letting givers pick what they would like in return — meals, stays, services, etc. — for each of their contributions, and with great deals.

The platform itself is an innovation, said Aliza Napartivaumnuay, the company's co-founder and CEO. Most people know their way around online shopping and donation websites, but it can take time for them to wrap their heads around what the platform is.

21st-century fundraising

Socialgiver is, in a nutshell, a hybrid of both. It is expanding the scope of givers to not limited to the minority of frequent donors but the extensive market of lifestyle shoppers who may or may not acknowledge the issues. Meanwhile, it also pipelines fundings to all sizes of partner projects to fairly disperse the support.

One thing people these days have in common is as much as they are spending more heavily, they are also spending more cautiously. More and more people, especially the younger generations, are asking where their money goes, added Aliza. Socialgiver, thus, offers a new alternative. Shoppers can choose to inject their spending into a benevolent ecosystem, and givers can trace and track the actual changes they have made each time they donate.

By bringing out the strengths of both ends of the spectrum — shopping and giving — and utilizing online behaviors of modern spenders, Socialgiver has been able to improve both the tangibility and transparency of social giving.

On top of all, with 100% of the profit being donated to charity, thanks to the support of giving partners, they have been able to contribute to greater impacts.

Think big, do bigger

One of Socialgiver's missions is to create a socially conscious lifestyle movement. Currently, the platform operates only in Thailand. So, their current goal is to create a blueprint of this new way of doing good deeds that can mushroom across nations.

Socialgiver's journey has come a long way. Now, it's about showing and proving that you can make the best out of both worlds, and doing good can truly benefit businesses.

Givers don't have to give up their passion. Businesses can utilize their spare service capacity, and charities gain more exposure to the mass market. Thus, this business model is a credible way to ensure the irreversibility of problems.

This innovation is a promising approach to remove the elephant in the room once and for all. And we're not only talking about Thailand but the world.

Connecting the World

Inequality, as well as social and environmental problems, are on the rise everywhere. And the silver lining is they are blurring the national borders and connecting the populations as people of the world.

One of Socialgiver's outlooks for the future is to make its platform a global environment where users can contribute to any issue of their interest without geographical limitations.

A platform of people, for people

The journey of Socialgiver to leading the new norm of spending is an endless exploration. The people behind this excellent mechanism are always searching for ways to streamline its services and make them applicable for everyone.

It is terrific news that Socialgiver's platform now accepts a new payment method, QR Promptpay, alongside debit and credit cards. The upgrade would localize Socialgiver to harmonize more with the common e-commerce behaviors of Thais. Omise is honored to be a part of yet another step to give back to the community.

Don't miss the opportunity to make more meaningful purchases. Visit www.socialgiver.com or become a giving partner here.