“We take that footage and we send that to anyone across Canada who donated to that project,” Whitelaw said. “It makes it real, it proves that it’s done and it brings people into the experience.”

The idea for the app is based on a couple of Whitelaw’s own experiences with helping people.

The first was in 2002, when he spent a year teaching in Namibia, Africa.

Whitelaw, who was then 25, made friends with an African man who had very little. He wanted to do something nice for his friend, so he sent an appeal to family and friends back home to send money.

“They sent over $7,000 in about three days,” said Whitelaw, marvelling that this was in the days before crowdfunding.

Whitelaw used the money to buy things his friend badly needed — like a mattress and a refrigerator — and the response was remarkable.

Whitelaw recalls how all the women in the community came out and a “massive celebratory dance broke out.”

He felt emotional seeing this display of gratitude that helped him to more fully understand the good he was doing.

“That really painted what I felt was a more accurate picture of giving,” he said.

More than 10 years later, Whitelaw had his second life-changing experience.

At a conference in Las Vegas, he took part in a one-hour workshop, building prosthetic hands for kids and adults in other countries. On his team was a woman who was vocal about her reluctance to take part.

He watched her attitude change drastically at the end of the workshop, when the participants were shown a video about how prosthetic hands like the ones they had just made were changing people’s lives.

He describes the video as one that “completely changed the course of my life.”

Whitelaw said his previously reluctant teammate was moved to tears, and seeing her reaction got him thinking about how he could put the same concept to work to get thousands of people giving all around the world.

The key was the video, he said.

“It just showed you how much something simple like this can mean,” he said.

Givesome was soon born.

The beta version was launched in November of 2016, and the first project had been funded within minutes.

The app became widely available for iPhones in March, and is now also available for Android devices on Google Play.

Whitelaw is hoping it will tap into a new market of potential donors, people who might have been more reluctant to give to charity because they didn’t have a clear picture of what they were buying into.

“For most people, donation is about losing money,” he said. “We want to change the conversation ... to ‘I’m gaining. I’m becoming part of something way bigger than me.’”

For the charitable organizations that have begun signing on, it’s a clear win-win situation.

“Two of our most limited resources that keep us from helping as many people in need as we would like are time and money,” Children’s Foundation of Guelph and Wellington executive director Glenna Banda said in an email to the Mercury Tribune. “Givesome provides an opportunity to fill those gaps with a ready-made system that helps us communicate an urgent need, connect it with people who care and then show the impact of that need being met.”

Through Givesome, the Children’s Foundation was able to provide a holiday celebration for the Teenage Parents Program it supports through its Food & Friends program, she said.

Lakeside HOPE House was able to use a Givesome grant to support its EduKitchen program, which brings people in need together to share cooking skills and make a meal they can take home to share with their families.

“HOPE House is very excited about the launch of Givesome, and we are so happy to have partnered with them to help support our vision,” operations lead Kristen Tilley said in an email.

“This is a very tangible way for givers to invest not only their money, but also their hearts,” she said.

When it was still only available for iPhones, more than 525 people had already downloaded the app, but Whitelaw has a plan to significantly increase the number of users.

“Through our partnerships with companies, that’s really how we’re going to get our users and how we’re going to get our funding,” Whitelaw said.

The idea is to get companies that were going to make charitable contributions to give that money to their employees, through Givesome.

The employees will be able to download the app and will get access to a certain amount of money they can donate to projects of their choosing. Then, if they want to, they can become regular Givesome donors with their own money.

“We’re building the program now that allows companies to use us,” said Whitelaw.

In the meantime, there’s another incentive to download the app.

It’s free, and the first 28,000 people who download it will get $2 to give away to the project of their choice, Whitelaw said.

There are more than 140 organizations to support, and that number grows every week, he said.

Though the donations amounts are too small to generate a tax receipt, Whitelaw said the app includes links to the charities’ websites, so if a tax receipt is what you’re after, you can always donate directly.

In the meantime, “you can still use Givesome to discover new charities,” he said.

To download the app, visit www.givesome.com.