EchoAge and Other Better Ways to Do Birthday Presents
KJ Dell’Antonia
Like many of you, I suspect, I’ve long felt a
little empty inside when I see the giant pile of presents awaiting
children at birthday parties they host for their friends.
The wrapping (and the waste). The books they
already have. The stuff they didn’t want or that they use only once
before it ends up in the garbage or a giveaway box somewhere. Parents
spend time and money picking these things out, but our efforts may not
amount to much even with the best of intentions.
So I was thrilled when I first stumbled on EchoAge,
an invitation service that handles the gifts too. Parents of invited
guests hand over some money online, and EchoAge divides the accumulated
pile in half. After the company takes a 4.9 percent cut, the birthday
kid gets half the money to spend on a meaningful gift and picks a
charity to receive the other half.
As someone who defines my newspaper beat as
beating the system, EchoAge’s promise pushes every one of my pleasure
buttons. Parents avoid shopping for dozens of parties each year and may
get a tax deduction for the charitable portion of the gift. Birthday
boys and girls get a decent-sized present that they truly covet.
Birthday parents can lead a meaningful family discussion about
charitable causes that are important to the child. And the recycling bin
doesn’t overflow with wrapping paper. Everybody wins, right?
I finally got to test the answer to that
question recently when my daughter turned 8 and was game to put the
service through its paces as part of her slumber party. She was in the
middle of a sea creatures curriculum at school, so she chose to give
money to the World Society for the Protection of Animals.
The remaining money went toward her first-ever iTunes purchases and the
repainting of her room, which she’s covering herself since it’s a
“want” and not a “need.”
I found the invitation-generating software to
be at least as intuitive as other services I’ve used in the past, so I
had no problem there. And the notifications and movement of money were
glitch-free.
Two things gave me pause, though. First, I
was surprised to discover that I could see how much the guests’ parents
had contributed. This wasn’t information I wanted to know, and it made
me feel a little funny to look.
But of course I looked, and once I did, I was
surprised at the generosity. People were contributing more than we
typically would spend on a party gift. Was this because it was a small
party and these were parents of our daughter’s closest friends, so they
were inclined to do a bit more? Or did they feel guilted into giving
more money by the charitable angle and didn’t want to feel like they
were shortchanging our daughter either?
On the transparency front, it turns out
there’s a box I could have unchecked while setting up the party that
would have blocked the individual amounts. (The guests never see what
others are giving.) I never saw that box, and the company co-founder,
Debbie Zinman, said that she would see about making it more prominent.
She added, however, that many parents have a different response
entirely. “They want to see what everyone gave so they know what to give
themselves,” she said.
As for the guilt, Alison Smith, the other
co-founder, doesn’t see it that way. “Some people give what they give,
and that’s what they do,” she said. “And then those who are touched by
the idea of a child choosing a charity that means something to them —
that’s a good reason to potentially give more.” She added that with this
service, she and Ms. Zinman had actually hoped to level the playing
field, so that kids weren’t arriving with gifts of different sizes.
All of this has worked well enough that over
15,000 parties have been held via EchoAge since its launch in 2008. The
founders heard from enough jealous parents that they’re now opening the
platform to any sort of party, including 40th birthdays to which
children are not invited. It will also be possible to push 100 percent
of the gift money to charity.
We would use the service again without
hesitation now that we know which boxes to check and uncheck, though
when I ran the EchoAge concept by the people in my Facebook community,
there was more of a mixed reaction. It is awfully pecuniary, after all,
though to me that’s a good thing as children begin to learn what things
cost and how to make tradeoffs. The charity component need not be
outsourced either; a child could ask for books or canned food to give
away in lieu of (or in addition to) gifts.
Some families also go the
your-presence-is-our-present route. My experience with that, however,
has generally been that somebody always forgets and brings a gift anyway
or ignores the instructions altogether. Awkwardness ensues.