Executive Summary
Spark is positioned as a daily purpose ritual: 3 minutes, one cause. Learn, give, change.
That is strong framing because the product is not competing with donation platforms. It is competing with drift.
Most people do not fail to give because they are selfish. They fail because life gets busy and purpose becomes intermittent. Spark’s product goal is to turn values into a repeatable daily behavior.
The key insight is this: Spark is a habit product first, and a donation product second. If the habit is strong, giving compounds. If the habit is weak, the app becomes inspiring but optional, and churn will be brutal.
You can explore the product at spark.gives.
Ideal Customer Profile
Primary ICP: Values-driven professionals who feel a gap between who they want to be and how they actually spend their days. They have disposable income, limited time, and a recurring sense of “I should be doing more”.
Secondary ICP: “Purpose builders” who already consume impact content (podcasts, newsletters, docs), but rarely convert that attention into consistent action.
Shared traits:
- High intent, low follow-through
- Wants a small daily ritual, not a complex giving dashboard
- Trust sensitive: skeptical of vague impact claims
- Needs reinforcement quickly, not a quarterly recap
Anti-ICP:
- Heavy donors who already have a system and want control and breadth
- Users seeking maximum choice and browsing thousands of charities
- Users who primarily want social signaling or public virtue displays
The Real Problem
The problem is not access to causes. The problem is attention decay.
People care, then life interrupts. They forget. They lose the thread. Purpose becomes something they revisit when a documentary hits, when a friend shares a crisis, or when guilt spikes.
Spark’s opportunity is to compress impact into a daily unit that is small enough to repeat, but meaningful enough to matter.
Job To Be Done
JTBD: “When I want to live with purpose but I am busy, give me a daily ritual that makes my values visible and turns intention into action in minutes.”
Secondary JTBD that drives retention:
Identity JTBD: “Help me become the kind of person who shows up for what I care about, consistently.”
BELT Framework Analysis
BELT is a durability test used in Growth Pigeon clarity maps: Behavior, Enduring problem, Lock-ins, Transient distractions.
Behavior
The product attaches to an existing daily behavior: people scroll something every day. The challenge is replacing low-signal scrolling with a higher-signal ritual that still feels light.
Three minutes is the correct constraint. The risk is “3 minutes” becoming marketing copy rather than a product discipline.
Enduring Problem
The enduring problem is not charity discovery. It is purpose drift in modern life.
As long as people are busy, overloaded, and pulled by infinite content, they will struggle to maintain values-aligned behavior without a ritual.
Lock-ins
Spark’s potential lock-ins are not feature-based. They are psychological and historical:
- Streak identity: “I do this every day”
- Impact memory: a durable record of what you learned and enabled
- Curator trust: belief that Spark’s causes are vetted and real
- Personal narrative: a timeline that proves you are not drifting
If Spark can make the user feel proud, consistent, and informed, switching becomes emotionally costly.
Transient Distractions
The easiest way to break this product is to chase “donation platform” features:
- Too many causes and infinite browsing
- Too much data, too many charts, too much control
- Social gamification that feels performative
- AI features that dilute trust
This is a ritual. Rituals die when they become complicated.
The Loop to Protect
Spark’s loop should be explicit and ruthless:
- Open: one cause, one story
- Learn:
- Prove:
- Give:
- Reinforce:
The product wins if users feel a small emotional discomfort when they skip a day.
Positioning
Category: A daily purpose ritual that turns learning into measurable impact.
Positioning sentence: Spark gives you one curated cause a day, teaches you what matters in minutes, and turns that attention into real-world impact with a simple daily habit.
What to Cut (To Preserve Clarity)
- Do not expand into thousands of causes
- Do not let giving become a multi-step checkout ritual
- Do not over-gamify with hollow points
- Do not chase social sharing as the core growth engine
- Do not hide trust behind vague claims; show the vetting and outcomes clearly
Metrics That Prove This Works
- D1 to D7 retention:
- Completion rate:
- Time-to-complete:
- Streak formation:
- Trust signal:
- Monthly habit rate:
Final Recommendation
Spark should not try to be the best place to browse causes.
It should be the best place to not drift.
Protect the daily loop, keep the product small, and build trust through curation quality and transparent impact. If users feel a meaningful pull to return tomorrow, Spark wins.