The Seattle based daily deals effort called Gividend that sought to be a conduit for supporting charities has announced it is closing shop Feb. 22. In a letter to its customers and partners, CEO and Founder Aaron Bird announced that the "competition for customer acquisition in the daily deals space has become too fierce."

The service was launched in October of last year and hoped to provide support to the West Seattle Food Bank, an early community partner as well as KEXP radio, the American Red Cross and many others. They had planned to extend the service to 28 other cities.

Dear Gividend Customers and Partners,

I'm very sorry to announce that we will be retiring the Gividend service. Since launching Gividend, we have been unable to get the kind of traction in the market that we need to be successful and the create the impact we need to for our non-profit partners. We are going to shut the service down and send out our last checks to our non-profit partners this Wed, Feb 22nd.

We had the best of intentions and gave it our best, but the competition for customer acquisition in the daily deals space has become too fierce and we do not have the resources to compete. As Groupon's CEO, Andrew Mason explains "The barrier to entry in the daily deals market is very low, but the barrier to success is extremely high."

To continue to purchase daily deals that support non-profits, please see Deals4Dreams and Ideal Network. Please also checkout Global Mojo for a browser app that donates a portion of EVERYTHING you buy online (not just daily deals) to your favorite cause.

We thank you for your support and are very sorry that we couldn't make the impact we had hoped,

Aaron Bird