By Gordon Williams
The American Red Cross spends around $4 billion a year on such humanitarian services as aiding disaster victims, collecting blood, and teaching life-saving skills. Money on that scale doesn’t grow on trees. Raising it takes the efforts of fund-raising professionals, working closely with individual and corporate donors.
One fund-raising partner of the Red Cross Is Tango Card of Seattle WA. Tango Card fulfills digital rewards and incentives. Its mission is simple: make rewards easy to send and fun to receive. Tango Card does not donate cash directly to the Red Cross. What it does is provide a conduit for individuals to donate to the Red Cross.
We’re not talking about pocket change, either. Tyler Rencher, Tango Card’s partner alliance manager for regulated products, says users of his company’s program directed $60,000 to the Red Cross in 2021. That did not match the $116,000 they sent to the Red Cross in 2020, but Rencher notes that charitable giving generally soared in 2020 as the Covid pandemic took hold.
“Donations to the Red Cross hit $30,000 in the first quarter of 2022 and we expect that total to go well over $100,000 this year,” Rencher says. “The fourth quarter is usually the biggest quarter for giving, and that is still to come.”
Here’s a look at how Tango Card works and how the Red Cross benefits.
Tango Card partners with companies of all sizes to provide digital rewards on demand. Rencher says the company now has several thousand corporate customers that range from “big enterprise-level corporations to mom-and-pop shops.” These customers also have different goals and focus for their reward and incentive programs—from customer loyalty and employee engagement to wellness and research participation.
Regardless of program type, Tango Card’s reward solutions allow customers to modernize their reward and incentive programs. With a catalog of 650+ gift cards, prepaid cards, and not-for-profit donations, it provides reward options for everyone on the receiving end.
Tango Card’s customers can send instant digital rewards, directly to the inboxes of their recipients. Recipients simply click the redemption URL in their reward email and are directed to a reward catalog where they can choose from 100+ popular rewards, including not-for-profit donations such as those supporting the American Red Cross.
Tango Card was launched in Seattle in 2009–its first headquarters being the home of founder David Leeds. Non-profits were added to the catalog of offerings in 2013. Rencher says the decision to add charitable giving to the choices offered to reward recipients was made by Leeds. “Our CEO says that supporting non-profits is part of our corporate DNA,” Rencher says.
Rencher says that once the decision was made to include charitable giving among its options, adding the Red Cross to the list was an obvious choice. “We wanted to include charities that had a big national footprint, organizations that make the world a better place,” Rencher says.
Obviously, the Red Cross, with its mission of helping disaster victims when they need help the most, fits that definition to a T.
To donate via Tango Card, go to their website, pick the charity you want to support, enter the amount you want to give, and click: It’s as easy as that.
When you total up all the donors who do just that–pick a charity and click–you are talking about real money. “People may just donate a few dollars at a time,” Rencher says, “but those few dollars can build up quickly.”
American Red Cross NW Region 