Charity not only makes you feel good; it’s good for your taxes. In the case of Givesurance, the new app that makes coverage charitable, giving is good for the bottom line, too. Signing up with Givesurance takes money from payments you already make, and gives it to charity. It’s that simple. And no, they’re not a nonprofit.
The secret is Givesurance isn’t focused on paying for advertising, like so many other insurance companies (we’re looking at you, GEICO). As a brokerage, Givesurance returns a portion of its commission to those who join in the form of a donation credit that the insured can give to the charity of their choice. Rather than spending that commission money on wooing new clients (meaning, on advertising), Givesurance works with charities to spread the word of their greatness.
It’s a pretty great idea. Givesurance works like this: tell them your insurance company, renewal date, and policy number to check if you qualify. They’re currently working with a bunch of the big guys; Travelers, Progressive, Metlife, and Zurich among around 200 others in the home, auto, and commercial realms. Some few companies are yet included; if yours isn’t Givesurance can link you up with one of their partners’ similar plans for the same cost to you.
Once you’re in, you get 5 percent of your insurance payment back as a donation credit from your insurer and goes into your donation wallet, much like when someone sends money to your PayPal. In this case, the credits come out of what would have been the brokerage’s end, to the tune of about 30 percent of their total commission.
Givesurance still comes out 20 percent ahead, having saved that much over what they would have spent on advertising. No extra charge for you; no charge or penalty to the charity. You choose where the money goes. The list of charities includes Big Cat Rescue, Kids Enjoy Exercise Now, Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco, Books for Africa, International Medical Corp, iCare Foundation, and more.
This clever new brokerage is currently serving all policies in California; home, auto, health, and commercial. Home and auto are available in New Jersey, Texas, and Arizona, and will be rolling out in other states over the next six months. Health and commercial are going to be handled case by case for states besides California.
The company was a 500-Startups pick in 2014, and the Givesurance website donation wallet, where you can go to find out more about the company and signup for credits, launched June 25 2015 with funding from Kima Ventures, as well as 500 and Leslie Alexander, owner of the Houston Rockets, among other private investors.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
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Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
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AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
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