General

What is Makerble?

Makerble is a organisation discovery platform/online donation site that helps you find, fund and follow organisation projects addressing the causes you care about. We help organisations communicate the achievements that your donations are making, consequently you can see your impact in order to change the world. Find the best organisation to donate to and start an online donation.

Why do I need to sign-up in order to use Makerble?

At Makerble, we want you to be able to see the impact you make in the world. By signing-up you get a personal profile where you can see your organisation projects and the progress they are making. Signing-up is also required in order for you to receive impact updates from the organisation projects you have been donating towards. By signing up you can also follow your friends and discover new projects!

What is Gift Aid?

Gift aid increases the value of your donations and means organisations can benefit even more at no extra cost to you.
If you’re a UK taxpayer, add Gift Aid whenever you make an online donation and the organisation can reclaim the basic rate of tax on your donation. Higher tax payers can claim additional tax benefits for donations they make to organisation, which you can keep or pass on to any charitable organisation. Simply indicate how much you have donated when completing your tax-assessment form.

What is Intelligent Matching?

Find projects even more personalised to your interests! Intelligent Matching connects with your Facebook to see what your interests and passions are and then finds related projects.

Who are the people behind Makerble?

Matt, Annabel, Abhi and Kate are responsible for the day-to-day running of Makerble. Matt is a serial social entrepreneur who has been created ideas for social enterprises, organisations, government departments and brands. Makerble was his idea and he’s our CEO. Annabel has spent her career working with organisations, philanthropists and the people served by organisations. Annabel is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and our Director of Social Progress responsible for helping the people running the projects make the most of Makerble.

Projects & Organisations

What is the difference between a project and a organisation?

A organisation is a non-profit organisation that centers on nonprofit and philanthropic goals as well as social well-being. A project is run by a organisation but lasts for a limited time period and with a fixed budget. A organisation can have many different projects running at the same time.

What is a project?

A project is a specific piece of work with a beginning and an end and a fixed budget. Something that should produce results you can track and measure.

What are the benefits with supporting a project through Makerble?

At Makerble we value transparency and by donating to a project via Makerble we guarantee that you will receive impact updates explaining how the organisation project is going and giving you an insight into where the money is going. By supporting projects through Makerble, you can also follow your friends and see what projects they are donating to.

How are projects and organisations on Makerble chosen?

We check that the UK Organisation Commission has no complaints against the organisations on Makerble and that they are willing to provide a minimum of a monthly update on their projects’ progress. We only work with registered organisations.

How does Makerble benefit organisations?

70% of the income from donations goes to the top 1% of organisations, Makerble helps small organisations to be discovered. There is an urgent need for many organisations to find potential donors - with 1 in 6 organisations at risk of closure. 180,000 organisations in the UK and not all have the resources to share the great work they do with new people to attract the funding they need. organisations traditionally spend up to 15% of income on fundraising and it requires them to spend money upfront. With Makerble organisations do not need to pay any money upfront. There are no registration fees or monthly fees. Instead we lower their fundraising costs to just 4% of the amount donated.

I would like some more information about the organisation behind the project, where can I find it?

If you click on the project page you can find more information about the organisation.

Following

What kind of achievements are shared by the projects?

There are two different kinds of updates that are shared: progress updates which let you know the progress the project is making such as if a building is almost finished. Impact updates refer to the change that has been made, for example 40 children now has access to education.

What does it mean to add a project to the basket?

You add a project to the basket if you would like to start an online donation to this organisation project. After that you can choose how much you would like to give each month. You can easily add more projects to the basket in order to support several organisation projects and the same time.

What does it mean to follow a project?

Following a organisation project keeps you updated on the project's progress even though you are not donating to it. We introduced this so that people could get a feel for a project that they were uncertain about giving to right away.

Donations

How do I donate?

Donating via Makerble is very easy. You can create an account or sign in via Facebook. From then onwards you will see organisation projects suggested to you depending on which causes you care about and via a lifestyle check-out decide how much money you want to donate to the organisation.

Am I literally donating the virtual items shown in the Lifestyle Checkout?

No, your online donation is equivalent to the price of the virtual item.

What can you tell me about how my donation to a project is spent?

Your donation goes to that organisation project. The organisation is then committed to spending it on that project.

What is Stripe?

Stripe is a form of online payment system.

How is the research, management, monitoring and evaluation of these projects paid for?

Organisations factor these into the costs of their organisation projects and in some cases will have already paid for it with other donations.

What are the costs of giving through Makerble if I am a UK tax payer?

Organisations typically spend up to 15% of their income on fundraising. On Makerble we're working to reduce this. For every £1 you give via Makerble, we spend 4p on marketing so organisations don't have to. That 4p goes towards the running and promotion of Makerble so that organisations can focus on what they do best: creating projects that change the world. As a UK tax payer your donation is boosted by 25% at no extra cost to you, thanks to the Gift Aid Scheme. This means that Makerble's fee and the fee of our payment service, Stripe, are typically paid for by the free Gift Aid added. If you give a cappuccino a month on Makerble (£3), thanks to the Gift Aid Scheme that donation becomes £3.75 of which £3.34 goes to the project leaving 26pence to pay for the transaction on Stripe and 15pence to be used for Makerble technology & marketing. We use Stripe because as well as securely processing each donation transaction, they automatically transfer each online donation to each organisation's account so that they can start using their new funds quickly to make more change. Stripe's exact fee is 1.9% plus 20pence for UK cards and 2.9% plus 20pence for international cards.

What are the costs of giving through Makerble if I am not a UK tax payer?

Organisations typically spend up to 15% of their income on fundraising. On Makerble we're working to reduce this. For every £1 you give via Makerble, we spend 4p on marketing and technology so that organisations don't have to. That 4p goes towards the running and promotion of Makerble so that organisations can focus on what they do best: creating projects that change the world. We use a service called Stripe which is a bit like PayPal to automatically process your online donations securely and immediately transfer them to each organisations' account so that they can begin using the new funds right away. To provide this service, Stripe has a fee for UK cards of 1.9% plus 20pence. So if you give a cappuccino a month on Makerble, i.e. £3: £2.62 is spent on on the project, 26pence pays for the transaction and 12pence is used for Makerble technology & marketing. Stripe's fee for international cards is 2.9% + 20pence so if you give a cappuccino a month on Makerble, i.e. £3: £2.59 is spent on on the project, 29pence pays for the transaction and 12pence is used for Makerble technology & marketing.

My Profile and Sharing

Will Makerble post automatically on Facebook and other social media?

No, you can manually decide whether you would like the content to be shared on social media in order to encourage your friends to help you sponsor a cause and change the world your way.

Can I make my profile private?

Yes, it is possible to have your profile private. Simply sign-in and navigate to the settings section in the user menu at the top of the page. The privacy tab includes all settings related to your public profile on Makerble.

How can I change my password?

Simply sign-in and navigate to the settings section in the user menu at the top of the page. Then choose the password tab and easily change it.

Subscriptions

What will happen to my subscription when a project is finished?

When the project is finished you will receive a notification together with a suggestion of a new organisation project to donate towards.

Can I cancel my donation at any time?

If you want to cancel your online donation simply sign-in and navigate to the streams section in the user menu at the top of the page.

Glossary

Makers

‘Makers’ is the name we give to you guys! Those who sign-up and donate to projects on Makerble as you are the people who make change possible.

Change

At Makerble, we feel it´s not the funds someone gives that’s important - but the impact they create. This is referred to as ‘Change’ on Makerble, representing the change that a user makes.

Lifestyle Items

We feel that helping the world should be an integral part of all our lives, therefore the way you donate on Makerble reflects the values of products you may purchase in your life on a regular basis. We call these Lifestyle Items and they appear in your Basket when you’re deciding what you can afford to give to each project you care about.

Causes

Organisations on Makerble are classified into 16 different causes, depending on their area of relevance. These 16 causes are:

  • Animals
  • Children & Youth
  • Culture
  • Diet
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Finance
  • Fitness
  • Health
  • Mental Health & Wellbeing
  • Poverty
  • Relationships
  • Rights and freedom
  • Talent
  • Vulnerable adults

Sub-Causes

Each of the 16 causes has smaller categories within it, these are called sub-causes and are used to organise the organisations and projects.

Organisations

On Makerble, to help you make your change as easily as possible we partner with registered organisations who carry out the great work you fund.

Projects

To give you more control over the difference you make in the world, we ask the organisations on Makerble to create different projects showing the specific work they are doing and need help with - these are called Projects.

Project Leaders

Every movement needs a leader. ‘Project Leaders’ on Makerble are the people at each of our partner organisations that is running the project. They are our direct line of connection to the work happening on the ground.

Budget Items

To making creating change as simple and transparent as possible for our users, we ask the project leaders to specify all the items that they are going use their funds for. These are called ‘Budget items’ and can be seen on the project page of any project.

Updates

We at Makerble want our users to experience the change that they help make, so we ask the project leaders to send regular personal messages to their donors, giving them the latest information about how the project is going.

Expenditure Updates

After a project has been successfully funded, the project leader sends the Makers a detailed breakdown of how the funds were used, taking into account any real-world discrepancies- therefore keeping the Makers as integral elements of the change ecosystem.

Your Account

Making change together can bring groups of people closer, if you want to give as part of a group you can do so on Makerble with ‘Communities’. You can register any group of any size (e.g. a business or your yoga class) and all the members can make an impact together.

Teams

If you have a very large community, you can sub-divide it into different teams under one community in order to track your impact better. For example, a large business with a community on Makerble might want to have a smaller team for Marketing, and another one for Finance.

Albums

The selection of projects that a person, community or team funds on Makerble is very personal and representative, therefore we remember all the projects that you give to and call them your ‘Bundle’ which you can then share with others you care about.