Donating a few cents while grocery shopping has never been easier.

The other day I went to a Safeway for some grocery shopping, and when I was checking out the cashier asked, “would you like to donate 73 cents to the Breast Cancer Research centre?” While puzzled for a moment why the odd amount of money, I nodded and immediately got the answer when the change was dropped from the auto change dispenser: my transaction was rounded up to the dollar and the cents were donated. Then I walked out of the store with a warm nice feeling.

From my usability observer’s point of view, this fund-raising method is clever in a few ways:

1. Since the donation happens during the check out process, there is no separate action for the consumer to give the money. Hence the low fraction of donation.
2. Small change is one thing that lots of people don’t really like to keep in their pocket nowadays. In a gas station you can often see a tray that reads “leave-a-penny” – spare a few pennies that you don’t wanna keep anyways to the next customer who might need them to make up the gas payment. So here Safeway is actually doing me a favour for keeping the change.
3. Just like me, I believe lots of people are willing to do something for a cause, but often not very motivated to do it. If you can design a way to do it with very low affordance (very easy to do) people will love to participate as well as loving your brand more. Should note that for brand loyalty development.