Frequently asked questions

We're so glad you asked! Twio is a first of its kind platform that helps brands ditch discounts and reward their customers with donations to the causes they care about whenever they take actions like making a purchase, leaving a review or signing up for a newsletter.

‍Here's how it works:

‍1. Reward and incentivise your customers throughout the customer journey (completely distraction-free) with a free donation whenever they take actions (e.g. place an order, sign up for your newsletter, spend over a certain amount of money).

2. Once your customer completes the relevant action, we'll ping them a super short email containing your store's branding with instructions on how to redeem their donation.

3. Your users can then select a nonprofit to support using our intelligent cause selector (think Netflix's 'because you watched' but for nonprofits) on the twio platform, or choose to donate the voucher to one of your promoted causes.

Our goal is to create a global network of responsible stores and platforms that want to leverage their store and work alongside their customers to help tackle some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges we face (it also helps that donations are great for business, of course 😉 ).

This is the big one!

At twio, we pride ourselves on only supporting nonprofits that are leading the way in tackling problems in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. With this in mind, we have designed a thorough vetting process that includes desk-based research, forms, due diligence and compliance, and a telephone interview. Every organisation that you see on the platform has been through this process and met our strict standards.

However, we do understand that these days, the value of the word 'impact' has been diluted and its difficult to separate the 'impact-washers' from those that are really doing good. Here's a few things to keep in mind...

1. We assess impact by looking at what an organisation has achieved with the resources it has to date. Whilst we also look ahead, the most effective organisations are achieving impact year on year, following a strict strategic plan with measurable and attainable goals. If an organisation cannot clearly display any achievements, they are not onboarded.
2. We also focus on scalability. Whilst the organisations we have on the platform come in all shapes and sizes, they are all conducting operations that are capable of scaling. We do not onboard nonprofits that have no intentions to expand (because otherwise, what's the point in helping them raise more money).
3. Every organisation on the platform is working on one or more problems outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals framework. this framework was drawn up by the United Nations and list the most important issues of our time.
4. The vast majority of the nonprofits we support come to us as direct or indirect referrals from leading vetting bodies that specialise in finding the best organisations within a specific sector.

All this being said, it is important to understand that impact means different things. Impact isn't, in most cases, trees planted or books purchased. In lots of cases, impact is less tangible; it's job security, system change, research and development and so on. Assessing impact is complicated and comparing impact across organisations is difficult. Twio will never be a brand that oversimplifies these things to make them digestible at the expense of sending money to where it's REALLY needed.

We spoke with an organisation once that said " We can easily get funding to support a project that straps a camera on the back of a turtle, but we find it impossible to get funding to purchase and protect key turtle nesting habitats." Twio is the funder that supports the latter 🐢

It's great that you are already donating - congrats!

Twio focuses on customer choice. We believe it's common sense that customers will feel closer to a brand that supports a cause they care about. For example, if I don't care about planting trees, perhaps I won't be interested in supporting a brand that only plants trees.

However, we understand that there are also some brands that want to align their giving with their brand, as well as leadership teams that want to leverage their brands to support causes that they care about. If this is you, Twio is complimentary, not competing.

With twio, you can...

1. Allow your customers to redeem their donations with a cause (or causes) of your choice;
2. Allow your customers to redeem their donation with a cause of their own choice, selected from twio's database;
3. Given your customers a choice between option 1 and option 2.

Great question! Twio doesn't take anything from your donations; 100% goes to the cause. However, because we use third party providers to process payments (and send money to the hard to reach corners of the Earth), we may lose up to 5% in processing fees, but we're working on it; you'll have to take that one up with Stripe!

So, it depends on a few things:

1. What can you afford? We don't want donations to eat away too heavily at your margins, do we.
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2. What is your average order volume (AOV)? If it's really small, your donations will also be really small if the percentage is too low and as such, their impact will be minimised.
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3. How much more customer loyalty and engagement do you want? The evidence is clear, donations are great for business (hence why Amazon, eBay and Paypal are in on it). The more you give, the greater the incentive for your customers to come back to you in the future. In emoji speak: 5p = 😭 , 50p = 😊, £5 = 🤩🤩🤩


With twio, you can give as little as 1% of the total order volume. We typically recommend that stores give an amount in the range of 1-5% but we'll let you do the maths 🤓 Just remember, certain stores that incorporate donations have seen buyer churn decrease by %20+, with that in mind, donating 1%+ seems like a no-brainer!

One thing we see all the time is brands trying to attract customers online with the same cause marketing tactics. It usually looks something like this:

Store A: Buy an item and we'll plant a tree!
Store B: Buy an item and we'll plant 10 trees!
Store C: Buy and item and we will protect the entire Amazon rainforest for the next 100 years...

You get the point. With twio, we help you to get a better understanding of the causes that your customers TRUELY care about and how you can pull on their heart strings with cause marketing campaigns...

For example, say 50% of your customers donate to nonprofits supporting endangered species in Africa, 20% to nonprofits focussing on equality in Asia, and the final 30% to nonprofits tackling issues around education in Latin America. Would it not make sense to use this data when offering purpose-driven perks in the future if you are looking to stand out from all your other competitors that just plant trees?

Finding a nonprofit that aligns with your giving motivations and values is HARD 🤔 Our fabulous data scientists Anat and Nathan have developed an algorithm that helps customers to find the perfect organisation, just by answering a few simple questions.

For the maths whizzes out there, the system takes explicit preferences (what people say they care about) and implicit preferences (for example, if they came from a store that sells outdoor goods, perhaps they care about the environment) and jumbles them together to give each nonprofit in our database a score. This works a little bit like Netflix's "Because you watched" or Spotify's "Discover Weekly". The added benefit of this recommendation system is that it also helps the nonprofits we support to find new donors as they're able to understand more about the types of people that connect with the work they are doing.

Absolutely not! The beautiful thing about twio is that it can be added to your store with the click of a few buttons, no coding required (🙌 ). You can connect your store with twio by simply copy and pasting a URL onto your store page.

Our focus on simplicity also extends into how twio is presented on your store (it's completely distraction free) and how we provide a fully outsourced giving/CSR/corporate citizenship service that doesn't leave you scratching your head asking questions like: "Is this nonprofit legit?", "Will my customers like this nonprofit?", "How do we transfer donations to a nonprofit in Suriname?, "How do we tell our customers about what we've helped achieve?", and so on...

Stores use twio to help solve a problem, not give them a million options to choose from.

With great secrecy, of course 🤫 The only sensitive information we collect from you in order to deliver our services is each user's email address. This is so we can send them a link to redeem their donations. We are obviously compliant with GDPR and data privacy regulation; you can take a look at our privacy policy and cookie policy to get a more general view of how we deal with data throughout the full suite of twio products.

It's really quite simple. Twio's partner, The Earth Fund (a registered nonprofit in England and Wales) collects donations from you, the store, and pays them out to each nonprofit every quarter (if the charity reaches the minimum payout requirements) based on each customer's selections. This makes things more simple for everyone as we don't have money flying about left, right and centre (and also means each donation isn't hit hard by expensive transaction fees!).

Talking of fees, twio does not charge any platforms fees; 100% goes to the cause. However, given we use third party providers, like Stripe and Wise, to make payments, the nonprofits will lose a small percentage (around 1-2%) of each donation, especially when we're sending money to harder to reach places 🌍

Because as a Founding team we love speaking to our customers, you can reach Barny and Cesar at hello@twio.io. You can also fill out our contact form. We'll aim to get back to you as quick as we can (which is usually same day 🤞 ).

Great question! Like all things, sometimes with the best intentions, some of your customers won't redeem their donations (perhaps they forgot or got distracted). With twio, you can either...

1. Only pay for donations that are redeemed by customers
2. Automatically donate all unredeemed donations to a default cause of your choice.

Going forwards, we also hope to enable you to recycle these donations and use them to: enhance your relationship with participating customers; give away in campaigns; or distribute to your employees - the list is endless!