Kindergifts

Enabling children to celebrate their birthdays for a good cause.

Kindergifts is changing the way people celebrate; enabling children to give back to local charities and create social impact through their birthday parties.

Over £1bn a year is spent on birthday party gifts. At a typical party, a child receives around 20 little gifts, which can concern parents about the amount of presents, lack of appreciation, clutter and waste. It’s costly and inconvenient for the guests to buy last-minute birthday presents, and the level of social disconnect is striking: four million children in the UK live in poverty.

The Kindergifts online invitation platform allows children to share their celebrations with a charity and get a dream gift from their friends. Through the party invitation process, the parent / carer and child choose a meaningful group gift, a charity to support and a percentage of the total proceeds they wish to donate (usually 50%). Instead of buying presents, guests have the option to contribute money towards the child’s birthday wish. At the end of the party, the platform makes two payments: one to the host and one to the charity.

Kindergifts believe this will channel a significant new source of income to local charities. It will connect families with good causes in the local community and enable people to turn gift waste into an opportunity to help others. Encouraging children to act philanthropically from an early childhood age is hugely beneficial  and can bring profound and sustained social benefits. They feel this has the potential to unlock over £1bn worth of wasted gifts, with the unique gift-charity sharing concept being scalable and applicable to many celebrations: weddings, office parties and Christmas.

The platform is now trialling with parents in a small number of London schools. So far, they’ve raised over £20,000 from 600+ users with over £12,000 donated to 16 charities. Over the next 12 months the team aim to complete core MVP functionality and accelerate user acquisition to scale their social impact. They are close to raising the first tranche  of external funding to invest in the platform and user acquisition activities. Scaling up, there will be two income streams to sustain Kindergifts’ work and social mission.

Long-term, their vision is to be a one-stop-shop celebration platform for party inspiration that enables people to share their celebrations and give back.