[ibimage==28999==Large==none==self==ibimage_align-center]Today Culver City-based Causora is launching the next natural feature to its one-for-one social giving platform: eShop rewards, which rewards users a dollar for every dollar they donate online.
This isn’t a surprising turn for Causora which has already on-boarded over 150 California merchants to reward users with gift cards for their offline charitable donations. The idea to also reward donations made online makes total sense, especially for the holiday season, since a third of online charitable donations are made in December.
The 10-person Causora team started to prepare for a holiday season launch of eShop rewards a few months ago to meet the needs of their national charity partners, CEO and founder Kai Buehler said.
“Our charity partners on the East Coast and national organizations like Food for the Poor have continuously asked us to offer national rewards,” Buehler said. “The eShop rewards category allows us to reach a national audience and to run promotional campaigns with our charity partners that target the entire US.”
Now that the Causora team has positioned itself to reach national users, Buehler said they are also looking to also solidify a national rewards network with over 500 merchants while also acquiring over 1,000 charity partners in 2014.
These charity partners, like local chapters of the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity, and fundraising efforts, like a campaign to prepare Santa Monica for earthquakes, are able to incentivize donors with Causora’s one-for-one reward system. So if a Causora user donates $100 to an organization such as water.org, they will receive a $100 gift card to Causora merchants such as ZipCar, The Bouqs or Novica.
Causora focuses on partnering with merchants “who are socially conscious and who are addressing social change in their business policies,” Buehler said. (Plus, all their current merchants have 4+ stars on Yelp, so you know Causora only works with the best!)
Next up, Causora is looking to include more merchants with physical retail outlets and, armed with a $200,000 angel round, expand their team on the business development, graphic design and fundraising coordination fronts.
With their goals set through the holiday season and into 2014, Buehler said he hopes that, like his previous company Watchpoints that rewarded television-watchers, “Causora is evolving to become the rewards program for charitable giving.”
