Lyft will let you round up the cost of your ride and donate the rest to charity
Lyft is building on its good PR streak with a new way to donate to charity.
Riders who #DeletedUber or just really like Lyft will be able to round up the cost of their ride to the nearest dollar and donate the rest to charity.
Lyft users can't choose exactly which charity, but they do get the option to look through causes including the environment, veterans and LGBTQ equality.
To start donating, you have to opt into Round Up & Donate in the app's settings. Then every ride will be rounded up, with the change distributed across good causes. You can always opt out, but donating is not decided per ride.
The idea is similar to a feature already offered by RideAustin, one of the ridesharing companies that sprung up in Austin, Texas after Uber and Lyft left the city. RideAustin users can round up the cost of their rides to donate the money to local charities.
"Lyft is a values driven company and we deeply believe in participation. Round Up and Donate is a program that makes it easy to participate in a meaningful way by allowing people to give back to the causes they care about within our communities," Lyft Vice President of Marketing Melissa Waters said in a statement.
Lyft drew attention for promising to donate $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union in January, right after President Donald Trump signed his first Muslim travel ban. The company announced the donation while its chief competitor Uber was facing accusations that it broke a taxi strike during anti-ban protests. And since then, well, Uber has continued a rather severe losing streak.
A recent report estimated Lyft picked up an extra 3 percent bump in users right after the first Trump-related #DeleteUber campaign.
Round Up & Donate will be available to Lyft users "in a few weeks," Lyft said in a blog post.
Topics lyft
Emma Hinchliffe is a business reporter at Mashable. Before joining Mashable, she covered business and metro news at the Houston Chronicle.
