For people conducting their due diligence on the GiveOpp business opportunity there’s not a lot to go on.

Scattered across the internet are a few promotional videos and tens, if not hundreds of press release articles telling you how much of a difference GiveOpp are making around the world.

Business wise however and just what exactly the GiveOpp opportunity is itself are virtually non-existent.

Over the past few months I’ve done my best to piece together what I’ve been able to find and make some educated guesses along the way.

Despite my best efforts however there are some large pieces of the puzzle surrounding the GiveOpp business opportunity that still remain missing.

Until now.

Despite the obviousness of it, I can finally confirm that the reason so little information exists about GiveOpp is because the company uses Don Glanville’s Reverse Funnel System (RFS).

The basic premise of the RFS is to get prospects to hand over money in the hope that this initial investment will provide leverage towards getting them to convert into a sale.

Unfortunately in the case of GiveOpp it isn’t so much as a sale of a product as it is recruitment into the company itself, but more on that later.

GiveOpp – What is the product I’m going to be selling?

Back in 2007 Don Glanville created the RFS to market the travel club, Global Resorts Network (GRN).

GRN was a travel club with a $3000 membership price tag. This membership then gave you access to GRN’s travel deals and provided you actually wanted to travel somewhere, apparently there were savings to be had.

GiveOpp appear to be no different and are operating on a near identical product model.

The GiveOpp travel club membership “product” is called the ‘Philantrepreneurial World Traveler Membership‘.

GiveOpp claim this memebership is worth $9000 and they sell it to their members for $2995. Membership buys you access to the services of a company called the ‘Resort Club Warehouse’.

Here’s where things get a little interesting.

I wasn’t able to find any business listing for Resort Club Warehouse but the company does have it’s own website.

Functionality on the website is non-existent however unless you log in (presumably you’re provided a login once you’ve signed up for GiveOpp).

The source code for the Resort Club Warehouse website has one mention of ‘yourtravelservices.org’ but pointing a browser at the domain yields just another login.

A Google search unfortunately didn’t turn up much so I’m not exactly sure what their affiliation is with Resort Club Warehouse.

The Resort Club Warehouse website domain was registered on April 14, 2010 and is hosted by none other then Retro Hosting. Retro Hosting of course being a company owned by Don Glanville, the same guy that created the Reverse Funnel System.

This strongly suggests Glanville is the owner, or at least part owner of the Resort Club Warehouse business.

It’s worth noting at this point that GiveOpp do claim that the RFS is just one of the marketing systems they offer to their members. However to date I’ve yet to see another marketing system used.

Members are using social networks like Facebook to advertise but in the end you’re always directed to an all too familiar RFS splash page when you follow their marketing spiels.

What we have here is the interesting situation where the same guy that provides the marketing system(s) for GiveOpp also has a stake in the travel company the business opportunity is attached to.

Regardless of whether or not you’re successful as a GiveOpp philanthropreneur (their term, not mine), so long as you buy their marketing system and make travel bookings via Resort Club Warehouse, money is funnelling into the pockets of those that own GiveOpp.

Note that neither using the RFS as a marketing system or purchasing travel deals via Resort Club Warehouse directly make you any money in GiveOpp, which brings us to the compensation plan.

The GiveOpp compensation plan

At this point you’re probably wondering how you fund all your holidays with GiveOpp and Resort Club Warehouse. If you’re working the business opportunity fulltime the money has to come in from somewhere right?

This is where the GiveOpp compensation plan comes in.

There are ten levels in the GiveOpp compensation plan;

  • Tom
  • Philanthropist
  • Delegate
  • Emissary
  • Diplomat
  • Trustee
  • Proconsul
  • Ambassador
  • Chancellor
  • President

When you sign up to GiveOpp you are assigned the rank ‘Tom’ (which finally explains the ‘Be a Tom’ advertising). At this level you have what GiveOpp call a ‘level 0’, which makes you  ineligible to make any commissions.

To become eligible to make commissions you in a nutshell need to make two Philantrepreneurial World Traveler Membership sales, one of which can be your own membership purchase.

Note that the person who signed you up only makes a direct commission of you if you purchase a travel club membership, so there’s a strong onus on them to pressure you into buying one.

Two travel club membership sales activates you at the Philanthropist level of the compensation plan and enables you to earn commissions.

At this point your placed at the top of your own matrix system which is infinitely wide (the amount of people you directly recruit to GiveOpp) as it is deep (the amount of people your referrals refer to GiveOpp).

As a philanthropist (or Tom if you choose not to purchase travel club membership), the first person you sign on to the travel club earns you $500. Any additional referrals you personally recruit to the GiveOpp opportunity now make you an additional $1000.

Once one of your direct referrals refer someone to GiveOpp, they become your ‘affiliate qualifier’ which is jargon for them opening up level two of your personal matrix.

This level 2 affiliate qualifier (the first of your direct recruits to recruit someone of their own), has all their direct referral commissions passed to your upline. This isn’t a once off thing, it’s for the life of the business.

For all of your other recruits own personal recruits however you are eligible to make commission payouts of $1000 and $500. For each level of your matrix the first person to directly recruit a new member will become your ‘affiliate qualifier’.

With the exception of your level 2 affiliate qualifier, who’s direct referral commissions are rolled to your upline for life, you make $1000 per recruitment on your affiliate qualifier’s direct referrals. For everyone else in your matrix you make a $500 commission on their recruitments.

This goes on theoretically infinity levels deep as there’s no cap on the depth of levels in your matrix.

Likewise there’s no cap on the amount of direct referrals you can personally recruit either, so the possibility of a huge income earning matrix is quite possible over time.

So what’s the major problem with GiveOpp’s compensation plan?

Well as you can see commissions are directly tied into recruitment. The travel club membership itself is a one time purchase and is not a repeat consumable.

If everybody stops recruiting new members to GiveOpp, nobody gets paid commissions, which means nobody has any money to fund travel purchases from Resort Club Warehouse and the entire system grinds to a halt.

Co-incidentally this is most likely what happened with Global Resorts Network, thus the setting up of a new business opportunity, GiveOpp, using the same marketing system and travel club product.

The Fineprint

What does it cost to join GiveOpp?

Joining GiveOpp isn’t cheap. First of all you have to pay $59.95 to find out basic information about the company.

Then if you choose to join, GiveOpp Philantrepreneurial World Traveler Membership sets you back $2995, there’s an annual ‘GiveOpp World Traveler Annual Maintenance Fee’ that’s $199, a distributor starter kit for $49 and an admin fee of $55.

Grand total is $3357.95.

Note that the GiveOpp World Traveler Annual Maintenance fee is a recurring 12 month charge of $299.

The distributor starter kit is an initial payment of $49 but then drops to $39.95 monthly. This fee covers access to your GiveOpp backoffice so is pretty much a required monthly expense.

Be the change

One of the biggest selling points GiveOpp members have been using to promote the business is the fact that for each sale of a travel membership (or contribution as the company likes to call it), some proceeds are donated to a charitable organisation of your choice.

To their credit, this appears to be legitimate. GiveOpp members are given a choice of charitable organisations to select from and then for each recruitment to the travel club they make an undisclosed amount of the sale is donated to the chosen organisation.

The Reverse Funnel System

Note that this marketing system is not provided free to GiveOpp members. The Reverse Funnel Marketing System comes with a $299 a month price tag.

Final Thoughts

Although the GiveOpp business opportunity is marketed as a social change project, at it’s core is nothing more then a recruitment driven matrix compensation plan that relies on constant recruitment for commission payout.

Ultimately this is unsustainable due to the travel club membership being a one time purchase. Just like Global Resorts Network before it will eventually lead to the GiveOpp’s downfall.

Unlike Global Resorts Network however at least GiveOpp does appear to be contributing some of it’s profits to charitable organisations. At least then when the company ceases to exist they’ll have left something positive behind.

Unfortunately the charity side of things isn’t enough to mask the fact that if you do not recruit others to the GiveOpp travel club, you won’t make any commissions.