February 27, 2017; Mashable
Since the election of President Trump, NPQ has observed philanthropy being deployed to prank, fight, and to rage. Mashable informs us of a new Twitter-based donation platform called Trigger that enables Twitter users to use philanthropy to infuriate.
Trigger’s Twitter bio says it all: “We are retaliatory giving. Trigger lets you instantly donate to organizations of your choice using @’s and #’s on Twitter. Triggered by a post? Donate now.”
Instead of responding in kind with words to an offensive tweet, Twitter users can now deliver a devastating nonverbal blow to the offender simply by replying to a tweet with a dollar amount, the handle of a U.S. nonprofit that will needle the creep, and the hashtag #TriggerGive. Everyone wins, even the creep who lives for battle, but especially the chosen nonprofit.
Trigger’s founder, Isaac Alfton, told Mashable that he “rushed to complete the tool after the 2016 U.S. election drastically shifted the political climate in America.”
Anyone can pull the Trigger on this app; if a would-be donor is not yet registered, Trigger will tweet the link to complete a one-time easy signup. Users can also set up monthly automatic donations through Trigger. If a user makes a mistake or has a change of mind (or simply cools down), she or he has up to 24 hours to contact Trigger to amend the action.
Trigger charges a flat $1.79 monthly charge whether or not you make a donation. PayPal’s processing fee per transaction is 30 cents plus 2.9 percent of the donation.
Founded sometime in February, slightly fewer than 90 people currently follow Trigger’s Twitter. However, Trigger is preparing to take their initiative to other platforms. Will the new app catch on? We have at least two other instant giving social media platforms to consider; it appears each of the three instant giving platforms used the same website template. Both founded in 2010, Goodworld has 5,536 Twitter followers, and tinyGive has 1,737 Twitter followers. It will likely take a lot of anger for Trigger to take hold.
In general, mixing your nonprofit mission with politics is not recommended. Then again, President Trump’s pledge to end the 63-year-old Johnson Amendment that limits nonprofit organizations’ political activities is also not a good idea. But the anger that executive action could inspire could be good for Trigger.—James Schaffer