These three concepts, Virtual Currency, Loyalty Programs and Incentive Programs are strongly related. In brief, let's look at each of it shortly:

Complementary (or Virtual) Currency, not to be confuses with Digital Currency (i.e. Bitcoin), enables Alternative Markeplaces or Virtual Economies, namely marketplaces where goods or services can be paid with the alternative currency. Money in complementary or virtual currency can be purchased with real money, but also earned by selling artifacts and services to the community associated to the marketplace. It is very common in Virtual Words such as Second Life or in Internet games such as World of Warcraft or those linked to Facebook. In Switzerland, there is a well-known complementary currency called WIR franc ("we" in German). WIR was created to face post World War I economic crisis but it was never dismissed. In use still today, it was meant to be used between Swiss companies to deal with money value fluctuation. What is important to understand with complementary currencies is that once money is purchased it cannot be changed back to other currencies. The money has to remain in the community. 

Loyalty Programs, allow people to collect points or credits when they make purchases on associated retailers or vendors. The points can be exchanged for selected goods or services from a catalog. Usually, the monetary value of points correspond to a fraction of amount paid, i.e. 1 point for $10 paid. In some cases, points can be turned into money to purchase items in the associated retail stores or vendors (usually for the nominal value, i.e. 1 point = $1). Similarly to complementary currencies, the points collected cannot be exchanged for cash in another currency. However, they can be used "as if" they were cash to purchase items sold by the issuer (e.g. one can use point to buy items sold in the related loyalty program's retail store). 

Incentive Programs, although very similar to Loyalty Programs, they differ in purpose. Incentive Programs promote the purchase of additional items. Loyalty Point can be part of an Incentive Program as a reward of particular behavior. In a sense, Loyalty Programs can be seen as a type of Incentive Program that rewards recurring purchase within the same retail store or from the same vendor. However, it is not the only way to reward a particular behavior and many other behaviors can be rewarded. A very common Incentive Program is the Sales Incentive Program (SIP), namely rewarding people or organizations that drive sales. A special case of SIP are Affiliate Programs (or Referrals) where an organization sells items from a vendor and gets a commission on the sale.

Why do we talk about the above topics? Because we believe that Karmly can leverage these three concepts to drive generosity and sales at the same time. How is it possible? 

Karmly is essentially an Incentive Program for making donations to Charities and Causes, where generous behavior is Rewarded through Loyalty Points. These points are actually a Virtual/Complementary Currency that the users can use to bargain products and services in a Marketplace.

Since it's a Marketplace, anything can be sold and purchased. We will make our best to let our users to find exactly what they are looking for and for the best price on the market.

A simple query on Google Trends shows that people are more likely to be looking at deals than donations/charity/fundraising. My (preliminary) conclusion is that there is a substantial number of people who could be convinced to do donations when they are seeking for a deal. At least this shows that people are more motivated in seeking for deals than donations. If I could bridge these two worlds, I'd be very happy (and charities too).

This is an example of how companies support charities by establishing partnerships with charities such as P&G and UNICEF. It's a great marketing tool and a way to support large impact causes.

Although I believe that this is remarkable and very useful, I see some limitations:

1. It cannot be done too often. Otherwise, it is perceived as a truly marketing tool and people might even doubt about its effectiveness.
2. It does not provide a measurement of the progress of the campaign and if its expected impact has been achieved.
3. It must be "relevant" to the product. If the company sells, for instance, shoe-shine cream, what could be the the counterpart donation?
4. The customer does not choose what charity to help. In the case of Pampers, UNICEF is of course a great and probably obvious choice. But it is this always the case? What if the customer would like to support other causes?
5. The same type of campaign cannot be done by competitors. Suppose that both Pampers and Huggies would do the same? That would be great for UNICEF. But the customer would see this as "matching" a product-feature by the second arrived.

I believe that these initiatives should remain, especially for very large scale projects. But companies should think about alternative ways to perform CSR, for example, by supporting the causes that their customers have chosen to support. 

From the study presented in this blog post, it seems that donation is a form of repayment for something one has received in the past.

I wonder if people are interested in donating for a repayment that will occur in the future. We can all afford to make donations when we are in a good economic conditions. 

But what if we could save money for harder times by doing donations?  

What if I can be repaid for my donations when I really need it?