FAQs

Our purpose is to simplify giving, help good causes and reduce waste. We enable anyone from small children to big corporates to give charitable donations instead of unwanted gifts.

The Good Registry Trust covers transaction fees and operating costs with a 10% fee deducted from donations. Read more about this in the fees section of this FAQ.

Choose the special occasion you’d like to create a charitable registry for, choose the charity you'd like to support, sign up, then tell your crowd. Create your registry here.

After creating your registry, you can watch your registry page to see how many people have gifted and messages from people who have gifted. A running tally on your page will show how much has been given. When your registry closes, we’ll send you an email with the list of people who have gifted (those who chose to disclose their names when gifting), along with the total you’ve raised. We won’t share the individual value of each donation - we think it’s good to still keep some things secret!  

No. If you have Facebook, that’s a great way to tell people you’ve registered an event at The Good Registry and she your registry's URL. But it’s not the only way. You can spread the word through other social media, or on your event invitation (e.g. wedding invites), pop the details in an email or a card, or just tell people they can to come to thegoodregistry.com and search for you by name.

You can edit details such as your personal message to your gifters and your photos, and the closing date for your registry, but you won’t be able to change the charity you have chosen once people have started gifting. 

You may stop your event early. Donations that have already been made will not be refunded – the donation (less our fees) will still go to the charity you selected.

No, the receipts go to the people making the donations to your registry (just as they would if they were buying you a physical gift)

Simply find the person you are gifting to (they may have sent you a link to their page, or search for them by name). You can see all of our current registries here. Decide how much you would like to give, then select the ‘gift to this event’ button and follow the simple instructions to make your payment and leave a message.

If they’ve given you a link to their registry page, enter that link into your web browser. Otherwise, follow the link from our homepage to ‘find a registry’, (or simply click here) and you can search for them by name.

If you are giving to a registry, the person who created the registry has chosen the charity they would like to gift their special event to. This is the only charity you can gift to through their registry.

If you’d like to support any of the other charities on The Good Registry, you could set up your own registry for a special event of your own, or you could buy one of our charitable gift cards.

Yes – when you make your gift, you’ll be asked if you want to leave your name and a message. If you’d like to gift anonymously, you can choose not to leave your name.

You do need to provide your email address so that we can send you an electronic receipt.

The minimum is $1. There is no maximum!

Simply follow these steps (or contact us for help with bulk orders):

1. Click on the link to buy a gift card from the home page (or simply click here)
2. Choose the value of the gift card you would like to buy
3. You have the option to click 'customise' to choose a template to personalise your gift card (otherwise we'll use our standard card).
4. Repeat if you are buying more than one gift card, then
5. Select ‘go to cart’
6. Select ‘check out' and enter your details
7. Then ‘complete order’
8. Your receipt and a link to your gift card should be in your email inbox straight away. 

Yes - lots of people do! The minimum donation per charity is $5.

Good Gift Cards expire six months after issue and we encourage you to redeem them as soon as possible so we can get your donations to the causes you care about. The reason they expire, is that funds stay in our trust until cards are redeemed. If they never expired, and were never redeemed, funds would stay in our Trust indefinitely, and we want to get funds out to our partner charities to support their good work.  We think six months is a reasonable amount of time for us to hold funds in our Trust before paying out unredeemed funds to charity partners (see the next question for what happens with unredeemed funds!). 

The Good Registry Trust allocates unredeemed funds amongst our partner charities from any expired Good Gift Cards. There are a few ways the Trust does this. As of February 2020, the Trust has agreed that the main mechanisms may include (1) public polling within our giver networks, (2) issuing new Good Gift Cards to each of our charity partners (so that they can use them to allocate the funds to themselves, or give to others for promotional purposes ... or possibly even to support other causes); (3) issuing new Good Gift Cards to selected supporters (e.g. people who have given pro-bono time to help increase our reach and impact) so they have the opportunity to decide where donations go; and (4) Our Trust will allocate remaining funds a couple of times a year, and generally these allocations will support charities that have been most actively encouraging their supporters to give the gift of giving (therefore contributing to increasing our overall impact). If you'd like regular updates about where funds from Good Gift Cards go please follow us on Facebook (@thegoodregistry) or sign up to our newsletter. 

Your credit card will be charged on the day of your transaction.

Donations cannot be refunded once they’ve been processed. If you’d like to increase the amount of your gift, the simplest way to do that is with another transaction for the extra amount you’d like to give.

Yes, we will email you a receipt when you make your donation. If you don’t receive an email receipt straight away, please check your spam or junk folder or check with your email provider. Please make sure you keep your receipt safe until tax time if you wish to seek a tax credit for your donation.

Donations over $5 are eligible for a tax credit with the New Zealand IRD.

You can find all the information that you need about tax credits on the IRD’s website at http://www.ird.govt.nz/income-tax-individual/tax-credits/donations-taxcredits/donations-taxcredits.html

Yes.

For gift registries: Once a gifting event has finished, we allow 10 days for late gifting (we know gifts are sometimes belated!) before closing the registry and aggregating the amount raised from that event. An equivalent amount to the donations (less our fees) are paid into charities’ nominated New Zealand bank accounts between the 22nd and the 25th of the month following. Each charity receives a summary of the events that were gifted to them in the previous month, the aggregated amounts raised and fees deducted (see our fees section for more information on this). These reconciliations and payments are managed by our pro-bono partners at Deloitte.

For gift cards: After gift cards are redeemed with the recipient’s chosen charity (or otherwise expired and allocated by The Good Registry Trust), an amount equivalent to the donations (less our fees) are paid to charities quarterly. Each charity receives a summary of the gift cards that were gifted to them in the previous period and the aggregated amounts raised and fees deducted (see our fees section for more information on this). These reconciliations and payments are managed by our pro-bono partners at Deloitte.

Yes. We deduct a 10% fee from donations. There are two parts to this fee:

• Credit/debit card processing fees (paid to our payment service provider Stripe, and generally adding up to a little over 3%)
• All other administration and management costs, including the ongoing development, hosting and maintenance of The Good Registry website, processing and record keeping for payments to charities, receipting, auditing, user support, office costs, marketing and community engagement. These fees keep the engine for good running and enable us to reach more people and do more good. Some or all of this part of the fee is paid to The Good Registry Limited, which owns and operates The Good Registry website.

Charities receive 90% of each gift — or $9 for every $10 that is given. That’s great for charities because we’re providing a centralised service to them, enabling them to benefit from your gifting, without them having to build their own technology or functionality or manage communications and marketing or receipting. It’s also great for gift givers, relative to the usual extra costs on gift-buying such as wrapping paper and postage, and time! And of course, those funds enable our mahi to promote good giving and reduce waste.

The Good Registry is free for anyone to sign up to register an event, and there are no sign-up costs or ongoing costs for our partner charities.

No, The Good Registry Ltd is not making a profit yet. When we do start to make a profit, we’ll reinvest to increase our impact and/or reduce the fee on donations so that more money goes to the causes we’re here to help.

We spend carefully on the things that give you a great gifting experience and that amp up the good we can do.

Our costs include:

• Ongoing website hosting, maintenance, security and legal compliance
• Continually developing our platform to ensure we can do as much good as possible long term
• Engaging with and supporting our charities
• Engaging with and responding to our community of users
• Office costs and administration including handling of donations and payments to charities
• Spreading the word so that more people know about us and can join in on the good

There are thousands of charities doing good across New Zealand. We'd risk failing if we tried to include them all. 

Our priority is to have a well-diversified group of charities that represent our communities and resonate with New Zealanders, while staying within a cap of 65-70 charities - to maximise the mutual benefits and impacts. 

When we launched in 2017, we identified some of New Zealand's main national charities representing a diverse mix of causes, and we ran a crowd-sourcing campaign to help us choose a handful of other smaller, newer, localised or lesser-known organisations.

From time to time our Trust has reviewed our partnerships and will continue to do that. We look at what is happening in Aotearoa, what matters to New Zealanders, how our current charity partners are resonating with givers, and if there are gaps that we need to fill.   

All of our charity partners must be registered with Charities Services.

We're keeping a list of possible future charity partners, so contact us if you’d like to suggest a charity that you love - especially for they're working for a cause that's not currently represented amongst our partners. 

Our priority is to have a well-diversified group of charities that resonate with New Zealanders, staying within our cap of 65-70 partnerships to maximise the mutual benefits and impacts. Our Trust continues to review our partnerships from time to time, with a focus on identifying gaps, and achieving the right mix to represent and resonate with our givers and our communities.

It's always helpful to hear about causes that are important to our givers that are not currently represented in our charity whānau.

All of our charity partners must be registered with Charities Services.

Not at this stage. Feel free to contact us if you would like to express interest.

Our priority is to have a well-diversified group of charities that resonate with New Zealanders, staying within our cap of 65-70 partnerships to maximise the mutual benefits and impacts.

From time to time, our Trust will review our partnerships, with a focus on identifying gaps, and achieving the right mix to represent and resonate with our givers and communities. 

We will only accept charities that are registered with Charities Services. We will check they are registered with Charities Services, and that we have verified payee details, so that your donations go where you intend them to. Our terms and conditions require charities to tell us if their status changes.

Please contact us and we’ll reply to you as soon as we can. Please be patient with us — we’re a small and efficient volunteer team so we don’t have a call centre managing incoming calls (maybe one day!).

Giving directly to charities is great and there are lots of good ways to do that. We know that many people who use The Good Registry will also give directly to charities.

However, charities can find it difficult, time-consuming and expensive to reach new givers. And they can only do so much with their fundraising resources. So we are here to help with that. 

When you use The Good Registry, it’s not just you that’s giving, it’s a chance for your friends, family and others to give too. It’s also a cost-neutral way for people to do more good — because the donation is money people would have otherwise spent on a gift.

And because we’re redirecting money from unwanted or un-needed gifts, we’re reducing waste. Too much goes to landfill from gift packaging and wrapping (and often the gifts themselves!).

By gifting through the Good Registry, you are amplifying your good, and inspiring others to do the same.

Benefits of using our gift registries include:

• You can set up your own registry page and share your link through social media, on event or party invitations or by email or word of mouth.
• Your friends and family can see their gift added to your gift registry tally and leave a message when they gift, which adds to the celebration. They can have confidence that you know the gift has been made (though you won’t know how much each person has given) and that you have received their message.
• You can see the total amount that your special event has raised, and celebrate that.
• The Good Registry provides an electronic receipt for every donation, and every receipt for donations above $5 is eligible for a New Zealand tax credit. The receipts are emailed as soon as donations are made, so you’ll never have to chase it.
• Because we manage the receipting, our partner charities don’t have to. They can spend more of their time and resources doing good.
• You might start a snowball. Once your friends have given to you, they might pay forward an event of their own too. A $10 Good Gift Card that you give someone for Christmas, might inspire a $10,000 wedding registry!

The Good Registry is a social enterprise. It comprises a registered charitable trust and a separately owned incorporated company — with a shared social purpose of simplifying giving, helping good causes and reducing waste.

The Good Registry Trust receives your donations and pays forward those donations to your chosen charities, less the 10% fee (which you can read more about in the fees section).

The Good Registry Limited provides all of the technology, marketing and administration to sustain and grow our community and our platform, using its portion of the fee to cover those costs.

The Good Registry Limited is not yet generating a profit. When we do have profits, we’ll keep investing at least 51% towards our social purpose to keep doing more good.

The Good Registry was co-founded by three Wellingtonians who are all passionate about doing good things: Christine Langdon, Tracey Bridges and Sue McCabe. Christine is our Chief of Good (aka Chief Executive) and Tracey and Sue are directors. We’re a small team out to do lots of good.

We're a very small volunteer team supported by some wonderful pro-bono professionals and interns. If you’re interested in joining our team, volunteering or interning with us please contact us.

We will consider partnership or advertising opportunities with organisations that share our vision of simplifying giving, helping good causes and reducing waste. If you’d like to talk to us more, please contact us.

No, our software is designed to pick up and prevent the use of offensive language, but otherwise, we don’t screen registry pages.

Charities create their own profile pages for The Good Registry. See the ‘our charities’ section in the Q&A for more information on verification of charities.

Yes. All credit card information is transmitted via an encrypted connection to our payment processor, Stripe (stripe.com). Stripe is a global leader in online payments used by companies such as Facebook and Twitter. Stripe has strict administrative, technical and physical procedures to protect information on their servers. We do not store any credit card numbers on our servers.

Yes. We make sure your personal and financial information is kept secure at all times. For more information see our privacy statement and our terms and conditions.

No, we won’t disclose your personal information to third parties unless we are required to do so by law or legal process, for example by law enforcement agencies, or as provided for in our terms and conditions. For more information see our privacy statement.

If you’ve received harmful communication through The Good Registry (for example a comment on your gift registry page) please let us know right away. Contact us and include the link to the page in question and the harmful communication you have received.

For more information on the Harmful Digital Communications Act (HDCA), please visit our terms and conditions.