In addition to launching two new Choice/One4All gift cards, Blackhawk Network has launched three new Giving Good gift cards. While more cards are always welcome, there is a concern that this could presage some negative changes.
Here’s more about the new Giving Good gift cards:
One4All Giving Good Gratitude Gift Card
Eligible retailers:
- The Cheesecake Factory
- Chili’s
- Cold Stone Creamery
- IHOP
- Cracker Barrel
- Red Robin
- California Pizza Kitchen
- Applebee’s
One4All Giving Good Joy Gift Card
Eligible retailers:
- Outback Steakhouse
- Lowe’s
- Cracker Barrel
- Xbox
- Macy’s
One4All Giving Good Hope Gift Card
Eligible retailers:
- The Cheesecake Factory
- Panera Bread
- Bath & Body Works
- Sephora
- Nordstrom
Quick Thoughts
As mentioned at the start of the post, more new Giving Good brands is – in theory – a positive development as it gives you more choice as to which ones you buy.
There’s also a difference as to how these new Giving Good gift cards award money to the participating charities. With existing Giving Good cards, each brand is for a specific charity (e.g. Habitat for Humanity, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Make-A-Wish, etc.) and with whichever version you buy, 3% of its value goes to that specific charity.
With these new Gratitude, Hope and Joy cards, all those partnering charities are a donation option. When redeeming the cards online for the eligible retailers, you’ll get to pick where your 3% gets donated to. That’s a positive development because it means if there’s a cause that’s closer to your heart than others, you’ll be able to select that one.
The downside is if they retire the six existing Giving Good gift card brands. That’s because the Habitat For Humanity brand can be redeemed for Home Depot gift cards, while the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital brand can be redeemed for Best Buy gift cards (although there are two St Jude cards – one with Best Buy and one without). If those cards go away, Giving Good cards will become significantly less appealing, affecting both gift card resellers and those two charities specifically as donations to them would presumably drop fairly significantly.
When looking at multi-store gift card options on Giftcards.com (our affiliate link), only these three Giving Good brands are displayed – all the old versions have been removed. For the time being, the old versions are still available on sites like Kroger online (which, like Giftcards.com, is run by Blackhawk Network), with the new versions being added there too. Fingers crossed that the old options remain; however, when there have been changes like this in the past, Giftcards.com has been the first site to be updated, with there being a lag of a few months before those changes get rolled out to other stores selling those cards. We’ll have to wait and see if that’ll be the case with these changes too.