How the ShopGiv ROI Calculator Works

What number are we actually solving for?

Every lead platform advertises cost per lead. That is the wrong number to budget against, because a lead is not a customer. The number that decides whether a channel is worth it is cost per acquired customer:

Cost per acquired customer = cost per lead ÷ lead-to-close rate

Shared-lead marketplaces resell the same lead to 3–5 competitors at once, which crushes the close rate and quietly triples or quadruples the real cost of a customer. A $50 lead that closes 1 in 10 times is a $500 customer, not a $50 one. The full published ranges by channel and trade are in the cost-of-acquisition data page.

Why judge that cost against contribution margin, not net margin?

Net profit marginis what's left after every cost of running the business — rent, insurance, office staff, the owner's pay — comes out. It answers “how healthy is my business,” and for most trades it is a thin 3–18%. It is the wrong yardstick for one more job.

Contribution margin asks a different question: of the next job that walks in the door, how much is profit after only the direct cost of doing that specific job— materials, parts, and the crew labor tied to it? Overhead and the owner's salary don't change whether you take one more job this month; they're already paid for. That is why contribution margin on an incremental job routinely runs 3–10x higher than the headline net margin (ServiceTitan, Toast).

This is the pivot the whole model turns on: compare a channel's cost per customer to the contribution margin of one job, not to net margin. A painter spending $600 to win a $4,800 exterior job at 55% contribution margin nets $2,040on that job alone — a good trade even at the high end of Angi's CAC range. The same $600 against a $275 auto repair order (55% contribution margin, ~$151) is underwater before the second visit. Ticket size, not the lead's sticker price, decides whether a channel pencils out.

Contribution-margin figures used throughout the companion pages are estimated from published gross-margin data and labor/materials splits — directional, “adjust to your own numbers,” not audited figures.

The break-even logic on a pay-only-when-a-job-closes model

Traditional channels charge you up front, whether or not the lead ever becomes a customer. ShopGiv frames acquisition spend differently: a business redirects a slice of an already-closed, already-paidsale into a local nonprofit. Because the cost only triggers on a completed transaction, the “acquisition cost” in this model can't exceed a fraction of what a customer actually spent — there is no equivalent of paying for a lead that ghosts you.

The break-even question becomes: how many of the customers who transact this way have to be genuinely new(incremental) — rather than people who would have bought anyway — for the spend to pay for itself against a typical ad channel? On the model's own numbers, the anchor is roughly this: you're ahead as long as more than about 1 in 8 ShopGiv customers is incremental— because the contribution margin those incremental customers add outweighs the give-back on the rest. That ratio is a projection to reason through with your own margin and ticket size, not a measured result: ShopGiv is early-stage and pre-traction, so there is no realized-ROI track record to cite yet, and the platform can't guarantee any specific number of new customers.

Of the give-back a business directs through ShopGiv, 92.5% goes to the nonprofit and 7.5% is the platform fee — the model is designed so nearly all of the contribution reaches the cause, not that 100% does. The recipient is a 501(c)(3); whether any contribution is tax-deductible for your business is a question for your accountant, not a claim this page makes.

How to estimate your own true cost per acquired customer

1. Pull your cost per lead. From whatever platform you're using: your monthly invoice divided by leads received.
2. Track your actual close rate for 90 days. Count leads that became paying, completed jobs — not just leads contacted.
3. Divide to get cost per acquired customer. Cost per lead ÷ close rate = your real cost per acquired customer. Compare it to the published ranges for your channel, not the advertised cost-per-lead number.
4. Compare that figure to your contribution margin on one job. Price minus the direct materials and labor for that specific job — not your net margin. If the acquisition cost is smaller than one job's contribution margin, the channel is arithmetically rational even if your year-end net margin looks thin.

Keep reading

• What Customer Acquisition Actually Costs, by Trade (2026 Data) — the full sourced reference and the hub for this companion layer.
• Cost-per-acquired-customer benchmark tables — both comparison tables with their primary sources.