Give to Reach
I get more first-time email than I can read. Give to Reach sets it aside and replies for me with one request: a $2 gift to GiveDirectly, as a sign that your email was meant for me.
Sergio González — Product and GTM at Talka. Before that, Stripe, Twitter and Google. LinkedIn
How it works
- Give to Reach sets aside every email from someone I do not know*, so I never see it.
- You get a note in the same thread, with a link made for your email.
- You give $2 to GiveDirectly on Every.org, a US nonprofit donation platform. Every.org sends you the receipt.
- Every.org tells Give to Reach the gift went through. Your email comes back to my inbox, and I answer it myself within three business days: a real answer, yes or no, from me.
* Someone I know: anyone I have written to, anyone at an organisation I have written to, or anyone introduced by one of them.
Your gift goes to GiveDirectly through Every.org. None of it comes to me. At checkout, Every.org offers to add a tip for itself; that is optional.
If this note is not for you
A client, or someone I know? The note reached you by mistake, and I am sorry. Reply to it with one line and I will read it myself. A pitch in that reply gets the same answer: the link.
Would rather not? No hard feelings. Your email stays set aside, unread, so my silence is not an answer.
Writing again? Each new email gets a short note of its own, counting how many times you have written. The price does not change, and one gift covers them all: everything you sent comes back to my inbox, and anything later comes straight there.
Why $2, and why GiveDirectly
The amount is small on purpose. It is not a fee; it is a sign that you meant to write to me and not to a list. GiveDirectly gives cash to families in extreme poverty, and its results have been tested in independent trials.
What it keeps about your email
The note has no images and no tracking pixels. An AI model scores your email for relevance. What is kept: the score, a category, a few short excerpts with every name, company and link removed, the code in the link, and your address, which stays in my own Google account; the data pooled for research carries only a one-way code made from it. Not the text. The privacy policy has the rest, in a section written for senders.
Questions
- Is this real?
- Yes. The note is not a mass email: it arrives as a reply inside the thread you started, from my own address. The link opens GiveDirectly's page on Every.org, not a page of mine. The tool writes only to people who wrote to me first, and only in reply: if you write again, you get a shorter note, and one gift brings back every email you sent me.
- Will you actually reply?
- Yes. The tool holds me to it: when your gift lands, your email is starred in my inbox with a deadline, and I answer within three business days.
- Is the money really going to charity?
- Yes. Every.org takes the gift and sends the receipt. I never see your card and never touch the money.
- I gave and heard nothing.
- Reply to the note with the date of your gift. I read those myself.
- Are you connected to GiveDirectly or Every.org?
- No. I have no relationship with either, and I get nothing from either. I chose GiveDirectly because it gives cash directly and its results are well studied, and Every.org because it takes gifts for any US nonprofit and sends the receipt itself.
For other inboxes
Want this on your own inbox?
The same filter and the same page, with your own numbers. A small group is going first.