App Gạo is a New & Digitized Charity Experience

Last summer, during my 14-day quarantine after flying home, my friend called me and told me her crazy idea. We talked about ways people can donate to those who were heavily impacted by COVID-19. We found out that unless we donated as an institution, it was actually difficult to do charity because we needed to ensure a few things:

1. That the individual/organization doing charity is reliable
2. That our donation comes to those who actually need it
3. That the donation recipients receive just enough

Most of the time, people don’t have time or may not be mindful enough to do careful research and follow-up with their donations. We needed a faster, more efficient, and transparent way to bridge the gap between those who can share and those in need. App Gạo was born out of quarantine to remove all barriers to the donation process and empower community-giving. We ran 2 beta tests in 2 months with 4 charity organizations operating in 4 different provinces of Vietnam and delivered 12,818lbs (5814kg) of rice to underprivileged students, workers, elders, and patients across Vietnam.

Our future vision for App Gao was not limited to only rice. We wanted people to be able to donate a variety of products and services. We aimed for App Gao to become a management tool/network for all charity organizations to manage their activities/donations, including scheduling volunteering events that anyone can check and sign up to participate in (similar to how ClassPass works).

Our team wanted App Gao to be the first thing that would come up in people’s minds when they think of charity. Although I didn’t understand what my developers talked about to one another at first, I unconsciously spent late nights scrolling through their messages to look up technical concepts and ask a team member to elaborate. I always thought that changes could only be made through policies, but App Gao proved me otherwise.

March 2020 - May 2020:

• We found our talented team members working in 2 time zones - Vietnam and United States: Vicky Giap, Tuan Dao, Quang Khanh, Trang Dang
• Built our first business plan, which included a 5-year vision plan (Vicky and I are very compatible when it comes to executing crazy ideas)
• Met and partnered with Mr. Tran Dang Tuan - the person behind Vietnam’s most successful charity organization
• Talked to so many people about our idea, including Mr. Giap Van Duong - who suggested the name “App Gao”, and Mr. Ban Thai Hung - one of the biggest supporter of my crazy ideas of all time Launched our web-app version
• Launched our app version
• Created our Facebook page

June 2020 - August 2020:

• Ran 2 beta tests: Delivered 670kg of rice to Xóm Chạy Thận

• Delivered 420kg of rice to Sa Lông Primary School in Mường Chà, Điện Biên through Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt)

• Delivered 550kg of rice to Chùa An Quốc

• Went on our first research trip to Mường Chà, Điện Biên to learn about the living conditions of people in mountainous areas (Watch my video here)

• Had a news article written about us

• Deployed our first user survey, identifying 3 technical glitches

• Received a funding offer worth of 20,000 USD from Vietnam Silicon Valley (but we didn’t know anything about investing!)

  
  

August 2020 - October 2020:

• Delivered 500kg of rice to Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt)
• Delivered 1852kg of rice to Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt)
• Delivered 1079kg of rice to Mỗi Ngày Một Quả Trứng (One Egg A Day): 800kg delivered to 40 families in Cư San, M'Drak 270kg delivered to families in Ea So, Ea Kar

Looking back, there are a few ideas I wish we could have done or continued to implement/improve:

• App engagement and user retention features that would notify or remind people to make a donation weekly/monthly/annually.

• A charity map (which now exists in Vietnam!) that shows all places in need of help as red dots, and can turn into green once they received support from a user.

• Our Excel file is a mess. It’s important to keep data organized as that’s the only thing I’m looking at right now as I’m writing this to ensure I got the details right.

  
  

We found a business model that worked. After looking into crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe, we learned that at least 1% of users’ donations go to these platforms. However, as a charity app, it wouldn’t look good if we were to charge users money so they can make donations. We realized that we were technically a third-party seller for our rice suppliers, so we decided to charge them 1% for each purchase made by users. We tested this out for a month, and we got: 16,957,000VND (745 USD)!!! Although it wasn’t a lot of money, this number proved that our business model could work! We donated all of this money to the 2 charity organizations that partnered with us and guided us as we learned about the charity scene in Vietnam: Quỹ Trò Nghèo Vùng Cao (Cơm Có Thịt) and Mỗi Ngày Một Quả Trứng (One Egg A Day).

We talked to so many people with expertise in law and finance to ask for their advice on how to give App Gao a legal entity (Non-profit? Or social enterprise? Who would represent us? Did we even have to pay tax? How much tax would we have to pay?). Since there are few social enterprises in Vietnam, and our business model was kind of new for an app, we didn’t find much information. We wanted to look for ways to grow App Gao, but who would be the CEO? COO? CTO? What would my team members’ roles be when we were all calling ourselves co-founders? It was clear that our team was small, and we needed to continue going on our own journeys so that one day, when we are equipped with the necessary knowledge and experience, we could actually make hard and important decisions with confidence.

Although we are no longer working on App Gao, I want to document our big milestones. I think we were very successful for an idea that we didn’t think would receive so much support and attention. App Gao was a crucial life event that marked my growth both as a friend and a team player.