The Orange County Register · October 28th, 2009, 7:47 am · posted by Ian Hamilton

If you’ve ever endured the social awkwardness of trying to get friends or coworkers to cough up the dough for a group gift, it’s time to check out eDivvy.

Irvine-based eDivvy is about making the whole process of splitting the cost of a gift easier. In fact, eDivvy aims to make it fun. The company offers a service that’s sort of a hybrid of Evite, Amazon and Paypal.

You simply search for the gift you want to give, from gift cards and iPods to televisions and laptops, and then invite a group of friends or coworkers to contribute. Invites go out much like an Evite (click on the link above if you’ve never heard of them) with a completely customized invitation.

Invitees log in at eDivvy.com and enter their payment information and the amount they’d like to contribute.

The organizer can set a specific amount to be contributed by each person as well as a minimum and/or a maximum amount.

eDivvy takes a 4 percent service fee - that’s 40 cents if your cost for the gift is $10.

The organizer of the gift has the option of keeping the contribution amounts private, the list of participants private or giving people the ability to invite others.

There are three possible outcomes for the gifting process - overfunded, underfunded and fully funded. If you meet the goal perfectly, the gift is shipped to the organizer or whomever he or she specifies. If the gift is underfunded, a Visa gift card is issued in the amount raised. If the gift is overfunded, the gift is shipped to the organizer or whomever he or she specifies AND a Visa gift card is issued for whatever amount that was raised over the cost of the gift.

The company also recently launched a business-to-business payment option that makes it easier for people to split a gift at the point of sale - meaning they’re offering a little “pay with eDivvy” button other Web sites can use on their sites to hook into eDivvy.

Execs at eDivvy say that while they aren’t profitable yet (the service has been publicly available less than a year), it is a service that’s well-suited for a tight economy. In other words, people who still want to give more expensive gifts could pool together the resources of their friends and family to pull it off.

Let us know in the comments if you think eDivvy sounds like a good idea and tell us how you’d use it.