A Milwaukee company has launched a smartphone app that allows people to make donations and raise money for their favorite nonprofit organizations.
The app, called TaskCause, offers a "giving by doing" model, where users can post a request for a service, or offer their services, and the user can decide the amount they want to send to a designated nonprofit, minus a 5% transaction fee. Tasks can include things like lawn mowing, furniture assembling, or dog walking.
If a nonprofit is not listed, users of the app can add the organization. Nonprofits also have the ability to register their organization.
TaskCause, developed by TaskFriend Technologies, is currently available on both iOS and Android phones.
“People want to reconnect and support meaningful causes,” said CEO and founder Kevin Nam. “The variables preventing them are time and money. People can't always make time to attend volunteer events nor do they have the money to support all the organizations doing great work.”
TaskFriend Technologies previously operated an app called TaskFriend, where people could request and offer services. Though it had reached 16,500 users since being made available in 2014, because it charged a minimal transaction fee, the company didn’t have a scalable way to advertise and grow the platform, Nam said.
The app was shut down this past October.
In the same month, however, Nam and his team began developing the TaskCause app to “give people a new tool that makes it more accessible for them to participate in giving by doing,” Nam said.
So far, five nonprofits have been registered to receive donations through the app.
“With this new path, we’re able to bring local communities together while keeping our core values in line,” Nam said.
