In the current economic climate, more and more people start looking into ways to ensure that despite all the difficulties, donations and funds keep flowing in for charities and nonprofit organizations. One of these people is British-born businessman Julian Worth, who might have just found a way to revolutionize the usual process of charity donations. His brainchild, the recently launched Xperedon (a Swiss-designed platform applications that was built from a $5m investment and some three years of development) combines the act of giving with the functionalities and the benefits of social media, a concept that hallmarks practically all successful new media ventures of the recent years.

In the core of the Xperedon platform are an ever-growing database of charities (5,629 charity organizations are listed at the time of writing this article) and the innovative idea called „charity profile” or „charity portfolio”, a handpicked selection of registered users, that consists of up to 20 charities of their choice, that they intend to support. Users manage these portfolios freely, adding and removing charities, sharing their profiles to show off, or opting for private donations, that are not visible to others. They can select regular donations, with monthly plans starting as low as $10, or they can obviously choose occasional donations with any amount. „Think of it as your personal charity DNA,” says Julian Worth, who hopes that it’s just a matter of time, when these charity profiles will become as popular and important to their users, as their Facebook accounts or Twitter feeds. „Xperedon is all about lifestyle giving, making it relevant and fun, while putting control firmly in the hands of the donor,” he adds.

The name Xperedon comes from a tricky acronym: „Expenditure Related Donation,” Julian Worth tells us, which refers to one of the features of the platform. The CardLink service, that also debuted with the launch of Xperedon a few days ago, allows users to link giving to spending, either as percentage on overall expenditure or (in an even more sophisticated scheme), by associating the type of spending with the type of giving. “Cardholders that sign up automatically spend more, typically between 3% and 6%. The card industry is all about volume, so we expect other issuers to follow suit and offer this ground-breaking service to their clients,” Julian Worth highlights. Due to the scale and ease of these “automated donations,” the CardLink service, can also be a most cost-effective way for charities to collect donations. According to the company, after the costs, some 95% of the money raised reaches the charities wherever in the world they are.

Yet another novelty of the platform is the option to create what they call Corporate Donation Schemes. The concept is based on corporate donations, that could be directed to the charities of the corporate’s employees’ choice, using the selection of their charity portfolios created in the Xperedon platform. “We have a number of companies in the US that are considering running this program,” Julian Worth tells Fundraisr.Org, although no company names can be published until agreements are reached in these negotiations.

Considering how crowded today’s social media scene is, a breakthrough for a newborn platform might as well sound difficult, but it can definitely be strengthened by, well… more social media. „Absolutely, that’s all coming,” Julian Worth ensures us when we’re asking whether a Facebook application, mobile or tablet apps are being developed to make it even more attractive for users to interact with Xperedon. (By the way, I was the 8th to like Xperedon’s Facebook Page)

A few days into the launch of Xperedon, it may be too early to tell whether the social features offered by the site will truly revolutionize the act of giving. When asked about registration volumes and first user feedbacks, Julian Worth highlights: „It’s early days and we are monitoring it. There is a lot of intereste, and we expect this to increase further when we are written about in the traditional press.” As for growth plan, no actual numbers were made public. „Our aim is to get out to as many users as possible of course, and to integrate CardLink with as many banks and card issuers as possible. The latter is a relatively slow process, but we are in this for the long haul,” Worth concludes.