FAQ

Givsly is a social impact platform that allows busy professionals the ability to volunteer in a new way – through taking business meetings in exchange for a donation to a favorite nonprofit.

Most professionals feel unfulfilled in their jobs and have little time to do anything about it. Givsly allows you to create social impact by volunteering a business meeting and creating social impact without leaving your office.

No, Givsly is a for profit organization. Givsly is technically categorized as a benefit corporation, defined by being committed to creating public benefit and sustainable value in addition to generating profit.

Yes. While Givsly is a social impact platform at its core, it is also a lead generation platform for people prospecting others for business meetings. Companies already exist that offer services to connect business people for meetings with the profits primarily going to the company for the introduction. It is also common for business people to spend money on lunches, concerts, and other experiences in order to get time with prospects for business. With Givsly, we want to create a more purpose led option to make these connections with the money going back to causes that support our community.

No. The Givsly platform is a public platform. We do not believe that social impact opportunities should sit behind a paywall, so we give access to anyone who wants to use it. We occasionally collaborate with third parties who use Givsly as a social impact platform for their event. In those cases our partners may apply special rules regarding meeting access.

Setting aside meetings on Givsly allows you to raise money for your favorite nonprofits by having individuals make a donation in exchange for a business meeting. You may get a lot of meeting requests a day or a week for external meetings already, so this helps to create social impact while forming new business relationships.

No. No one is required to use Givsly to schedule a meeting with you but it is an option available to you should you choose it. You are free to still book meetings the “old fashioned way.”

If a Givsly member whom you would like to connect with does not presently have any available times in their calendar or if the times they have volunteered do not work for you, you can ask them for meeting times. Givsly will let the other party know that you would like to meet them and you will receive a notification when they next volunteer more times on Givsly. The feature can be found on the Givsly member profile page.

Yes. Everyone is trying to meet with someone. Someone may be interested in your expertise or interested in working at the company you work at. You shouldn’t assume that others don’t value your time. By setting aside your own time, you have the opportunity to raise money for the nonprofits you care about too.

If your nonprofit is not on the platform, you can ask that nonprofit to join or contact the Givsly team to sign up your favorite nonprofit. To ask Givsly to sign up your nonprofit please reach out to nonprofits@givsly.com.

Similar to inviting nonprofits to the platform, you can also send Givsly as an option to prospects as a new way to show that you value their meeting time. It also gives insight into the nonprofits that prospects care about.

Yes. 100% of the nonprofit donation amount goes to the nonprofit of choice. There is a 15% Givsly platform fee and a payment processing fee for our transaction provider added to the donation amount. You can choose to pay the fees on top of your donation or have them reduced from the donation amount.

No. The donation made to a nonprofit on the platform is not a tax write off because there is value in the meeting in exchange for the donation.

Givsly gives you five different donation levels for you to choose from to value your time. The meetings are set in 15 minute increments of your time. You can choose to meet for 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes. As you select your time, the donation amount is adjusted based on the length of the meeting.

The funds will be held until 24 hours after the meeting is scheduled and then marked completed. Once that time period passes, the donation will be sent to the nonprofit at the end of each month.

The 15% Givsly fee enables open access to Givsly platform, supports its technology and maintenance, safe fund transfers to NPOs and the value of qualified lead generation for business meetings made through the platform.

When a booking request is made, an initial hold for the amount of the booking donation and Givsly fee as well as payment processing fee, is made on the booker's credit card.

If the meeting request is not responded to by the volunteer within 72 hours, the credit card hold on the booker’s credit card is released. If the meeting volunteer accepts the meeting within the allotted time, the reserved funds are charged from the credit card.

For an initially accepted meeting, should the volunteering party cancel, then the donation and the Givsly fee will be refunded but the payment processing fee is charged. For an initially accepted meeting, should the booking party cancel the meeting, then the donation amount will be refunded but the Givsly fee and payment processing fee will be charged.

In order to consider changes to any captured payments after the meeting has passed, Givsly should be made aware of initially accepted but then cancelled meetings or no-shows within 24 hours after the original meeting time and date. Givsly will need to confirm the cancellation from the other meeting party. For these scenarios or any such other potential situations, users should reach out to support@givsly.com.

We set limits to the amount of time you can volunteer because this should not be a platform for you to book all of your meetings. Limiting the amount of time set aside helps us make sure that people can create new social impact while not abusing the platform. Occasionally we run special event related partner collaborations on Givsly. We do not apply the regular Givsly weekly hour limit to event specific time volunteering as the events typically run over a few consecutive days and we want people to have the opportunity to connect with each other during the event and support their nonprofits in the process.

If the person does not respond to your initial request or accept your meeting within 72 hours then the donation will not be charged and the reservation on your credit card will be released. The donation and fees are charged when a meeting is accepted by both parties.

If your meeting date needs to be rescheduled then you can utilize the messaging feature within Givsly to agree with the other party how to reschedule the time of the meeting. We are not yet able to alter the already accepted and scheduled meeting times or methods in the platform but provide the messaging feature to communicate between parties.

Currently the easiest way to reschedule is to decline or cancel the existing meeting and to make a new meeting request to a time slot that the parties have agreed to through our messaging feature. The cancellation also cancels and refunds the initial nonprofit donation and the new booking creates another one instead. If after an initially accepted meeting the volunteering party cancels the meeting, the donation and the Givsly fee will be refunded but payment processing fee is charged. If after an initially accepted meeting the booking party cancels the meeting, the donation amount will be refunded but the Givsly fee and payment processing fee will be charged.

If your meeting is canceled after it has been initially accepted by both parties, we recommend promptly trying to reschedule with the other party using the messaging function in Givsly.

The cancellation also cancels and refunds the initial nonprofit donation. If after an initially accepted meeting the volunteering party cancels the meeting, the donation and the Givsly fee will be refunded but payment processing fee is charged. If after an initially accepted meeting the booking party cancels the meeting, the donation amount will be refunded but the Givsly fee and payment processing fee will be charged.

If the person volunteering the meeting time does not show up after accepting the meeting and no rescheduling is done via Givsly messaging, the user booking the meeting and making the donation will need to notify Givsly of the other party’s absence within 24 hours after the originally scheduled meeting time and date. After this notification Givsly, will also reach out to the other party to obtain confirmation of the absence before considering a refund. Otherwise payments will be scheduled as originally intended. If the person booking the meeting time does not show up or neither person shows up to a meeting that is accepted by both parties and no rescheduling is done via Givsly messaging, we will after a 24 hour window of the original meeting time consider the donation payments to be valid. For these scenarios or any other potential situations, users should email support@givsly.com.