Frequently Asked Questions About GiveAndDate.com:

• What the heck is GiveAndDate?

  It's a dating site that raises money for charity. Our site will ask you to give some money to one of our partnered charities any time you send your first message to another user.

• How do I sign up?

  To sign up, just click "JOIN" and follow the simple steps to create your free profile and upload a few photos of yourself.

• Is GiveAndDate free?

  Everything on GiveAndDate is technically free. But we do ask you to make donations when you contact another user for the first time. You can decline to make a donation, but the other user sees how much you donated.

• Can I pick which charity I want to support?

  You can select any of our partnered charities to support. When someone else on GiveAndDate sends you an initial message, they will be asked to make a donation to the charity you selected to support.

• I really love a charity that is not in your system… how can I support them?

  The GiveAndDate mission is about supporting the missions of our partnered charities… meaning we want to help them raise money while we advocate on their behalf. If we had every charity in every city, the fundraising would be diluted and the advocacy would just become noise. We limit ourselves to ten partnerships in each city. You are welcome to suggest a charity for us to partner with by emailing Katherine Bilby at Katherine@GiveAndDate.com

• Why are some people featured on my citys front page?

  When you sign up for GiveAndDate, your profile is automatically placed in the queue to Be Featured in your city. This is simply to help draw attention to your profile – and it's the model that launched GiveAndDate.

• How do I opt out of being featured?

  Anyone can choose to opt out of being featured by going to your profile and following the prompts to set your profile to private. This means no one will be able to see or contact you.

• How much of my donation goes to charity?

  GiveAndDate takes $1.50 on every donation transaction, regardless if your donation is $3 (the minimum) or $30.

• Is GiveAndDate a non-profit?

  No. We are a socially responsible for-profit. We have filed a provisional patent to protect our unique business method of generating non-profit donations to earn for-profit services. We have been featured in The Chronicle of Philanthropy for our commitment to charity. And we are an accredited B Corp!

• Why do I fill out a four-question application when I want to send someone a message?

  Your initial message to another user (the one that asks a donation) is a response to a four-question application. These are hypothetical questions, one of which the other user has submitted. We use the application as a way to encourage creativity and to send something that showcases some personality more than the typical "hi, how are you?" message. Hopefully it sparks a conversation.

• Do I have to go on a date?

  No and please use your best judgment and common sense when you do decide to meet someone offline. Please read our Dating Safety Tips.

• When will GiveAndDate open a dating network for my city?

  All we need is at least one local charity to sign up with GiveAndDate. If you have a relationship with a charity in your city, please have them contact Katherine Bilby at Katherine@GiveAndDate.com.

• Where did the idea for GiveAndDate come from?

  The idea was Charley Miller's while in graduate school (ITP at NYU). He figured there had to be a way to get more of his friends to be willing to try online dating. Their reluctance stemmed from the old stigma that online dating was for the desperate only. The idea was born for "a dating site that raises money for charity."

So without further adieu: We are Charley Miller, Katherine Bilby, Christian Bovine, Mike Mooney, and Simon Siu.

• Charley leads GiveAndDate. A lot of people ask him about where his idea for the site came from... and the truth is he can't quite remember when or how, but he knows he developed the idea while in graduate school where he earned a Master's Degree in Interaction Design from ITP at NYU. Charley is a game designer (by nature?) and a producer of interactive media (by trade?) and has produced a range of projects ranging from client work (EatingVine.com) to iPhone apps, urban games, and aggregation websites… all typically with a socially conscious nature.

• Katherine, like Charley, grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and takes pride in her bluegrass roots. She manages G&D's charity partnerships, communicating with our users, and organizing our offline events. Before moving to New York to help out on the start-up, Katherine managed the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. A blog recently described Katherine as "this tiny little thing with a big open heart and she's just getting into the groove of hitting lots of networking events to get the word out about GiveandDate.com." Katherine attended Connecticut College.

• Christian is our jack-of-all-trades, internet guru. While studying at ITP with Charley, he took note of Charley's idea of combining flirting with philanthropy. A year or so later, it was Christian's spark that motivated the two of them to enter the G&D idea into the NYU Stern Business Plan Competition. Shortly thereafter, G&D was born. Christian helped build the team and the website, specializing on the user experience and making bad jokes along the way.

• Mike is the guy on the team who deals with the stuff no one else wants to… like contracts and filings and all the legal / business junk that's critical but headache inducing. He's well prepared for the role since he received his MBA in 1999 from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and his J.D. in 2005 from The Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. He was admitted to the bar in New York in January 2006. And Mike might also be the nicest guy you've ever met. He and Charley both went to Kenyon College in Ohio.

• Simon, G&D's newest team member, is an ace asp.net programmer who leads the development of our website. After earning a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Simon was employed by HP for two and a half years developing a high volume website for Florida's Medicaid Management Information System. When his head isn't buried in his MVC manual, Simon likes to watch action movies and read thriller novels. Most Saturdays, he takes his two young children to different places around New York City while his wife goes to class. And when he is willing to sacrifice sleep, Simon cleans up the competition on first person shooter games on his PS3.