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 one 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? A second email from the same address gets no second note; it is set aside too. One gift covers you: after it, your later emails come straight to my inbox.
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 a one-way code made from your address — the address itself is not kept. 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 never twice to the same address.
- 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.