What 90 respondents told us.
Before building TraceGiving we ran an online survey asking what people thought of giving to a named person — and what they would actually have done with their money last year.
We collected 129 responses. We excluded 39 — people who dropped out before the currency question, and people who missed an attention-check item placed in the middle of the survey. That leaves 90 usable responses. Everything below counts only those.
Respondents were recruited through online survey panels such as SurveyCircle and Prolific, before TraceGiving operating. They are not a representative sample of any particular population — treat these figures as a signal about the idea, not a forecast.
Answers were given in euros, pounds, dollars and rupees. All amounts are converted at fixed rates as of 7 August 2026 and shown in the currency you pick.
What they gave, and what they would have given.
We asked how much they gave to each type of charity over the past 12 months, how much they would have given through TraceGiving instead, and — critically — whether that gift would have come out of their existing donations. Bars are averages per respondent, per year.
Mostly additional, not redirected.
The average respondent would have given $75 through TraceGiving while cutting only $14 from their other donations — so about 81% of it is money that would not otherwise have been given. Only 19 of 90 said any of it would have replaced an existing donation.
Averages are pulled up by a few large donors. For the typical respondent the figures are $39 given last year and $9 through TraceGiving.
Seeing the money land matters most.
Each statement was rated from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Bars are centred on the neutral answers, so agreement reads to the right and disagreement to the left.
This last statement is worded the other way round: agreement here is a concern about the model, not support for it.
What they liked, and what worried them.
61 people left a written comment. The themes below are the ones that came up repeatedly, each with one comment quoted as written.
What resonated
“It’s a comfort knowing where you are helping and that it is actually making a difference and not going to administrative costs for the company running the charity.”
“I get the chance to learn about the people that I am giving my money to, making it feel more personalised and seeing the impact on what my money has done.”
“Being able to choose someone to help gives the donor a sense of control over who the money goes to, and being able to reach out to that person brings an even greater sense of closeness.”
“The direct peer-to-peer method of TraceGiving is a great framework as it uses fine-grained transparency as a way of removing overhead aversion among donors.”
“We did this for twenty years for a charity in India… I think it’s a great idea as long as it can be verified.”
What worried people
“I find it a bit cringe because it’s like a market of poor people.”
“I worry that some people that really need help wouldn’t get it because they aren’t as ‘attractive’ to donors as others. For example children will be more likely to receive a donation than an older person.”
“I prefer my donations to be managed by professionals who truly know the situation on the ground.”
“I like the idea of it… but it gives me a bad feeling too — especially the part about contacting them afterwards. Even the report. I wouldn’t want the people to feel like they owed me that.”
“Allowing donors to contact recipients would be an extremely bad idea, unless all messages are carefully vetted by the charity before being passed on.”
The people behind the numbers.
These questions were optional, so each chart notes how many people answered it. Household income is after tax, converted like every other amount.
Gender
88 answeredHighest education completed
88 answeredEmployment status
88 answeredAnnual household income, after tax
63 answeredDoes this idea hold up?
A survey cannot tell us whether TraceGiving works. It can tell us which parts of the idea people responded to, which parts they pushed back on, and where the plan needs to change. Four things we think the answers support.
The traceability and choosing matter more than the contact
An update on how the money was used (78%), a report a year later (76%) and choosing the specific person (68%) drew more agreement than staying in touch, by a wide margin (31%, with 37% actively against). The product should be built around the evidence trail and the browsing, not the contact.
The money looks additional
A platform that only redirects existing donations just moves money between charities. Here the average respondent added $75 while cutting just $14 from other causes, and only 19 of 90 said any of it would have been a substitution. If roughly 81% additionality survives contact with real payment pages, TraceGiving grows the pool rather than competing for it.
The discomfort with choosing is real
About 20% of comments were negative, and the recurring objection was the act of picking one person over another, and the worry that the most appealing profiles get funded first while an older or less photogenic person waits. This argues for the shared fund and “find someone for me” being first-class routes rather than fallbacks.
Where the benefit to the world would come from
Direct unconditional cash transfers to people in extreme poverty already have a strong evidence base, and TraceGiving does not need to improve on it. Its contribution would be recruiting money that is not currently being given at all, from people whose stated barrier is not knowing where it goes. That is a narrow claim, and a defensible one: not a better use of existing philanthropy, but a larger pool flowing into something that already works.
What this does not show
Nobody was asked to part with any money, so willingness to pay is entirely untested — stated intentions routinely overstate what people do at a checkout (by a factor of 2-4). The sample came from online panels and skews educated and European, so none of these proportions should be read as national figures. And respondents raised two operational questions this survey cannot answer: whether meeting every recipient in person stays affordable at scale, and whether collecting an update from each of them stays workable as numbers grow.
These are early answers.
We are turning this feedback into the real thing — including the parts people pushed back on. Leave your email and we will tell you when TraceGiving launches. No spam, just one message when it is ready.