By Will Sturgeon, 7 January 2004 13:50
COMMENT There is a very good chance that you've seen an email which begins along these lines:
"Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman."
Or maybe: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Animal Rescue Site..."
Or: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Hunger site..."
Or: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Rainforest site..."
Or: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Child Health site..."
OK, so you get the idea. If you're like me you will have been very suspicious of them - perhaps even assuming them to be fraudulent or some kind of malicious attempt to add to the deluge of spam flooding people's inboxes. After all, chain letters are now a largely discredited - and illegal - way of marketing anything, so we tend to be suspicious of anybody using such a tool.
So what's the story? All these sites are run by an organisation called CharityUSA.com.
But despite its name CharityUSA is not a registered charity, it is a for-profit organisation, owned by a company called Homeline Publications, which gives "a percentage" of its profits to charity.
The company - one of a number of 'click-and-give' operators - sells advertising on a 'per click' basis and circulates emails imploring people to visit the sites to drive up the impressions. The email may come from a friend of yours but the uniformity of format should give a good indication of its original source.
To the recipient of such emails there appears no reason not to click. It doesn't cost you a thing and you believe you are doing some good.
And it's worth pointing out that you probably are - but perhaps not as much as you imagine. "A percentage" of the sites revenues do go to charities, as advertisers stump up donations in return for impressions - but "a percentage" of revenues also go towards the company's own profits.
However, the sites do too little in my opinion to make this latter point clear and it's a business model which raises a number of questions. First, the spam-like marketing of the sites is dubious to say the least. Perhaps they court less controversy than those marketing other products via bulk unsolicited email but this still feels like spam.
Second, there is the dichotomy which exists between the sites benefiting charities while also benefiting people who are essentially creating wealth out of nothing other than people's willingness to give.
In essence it's a business model which anybody could adopt and which is wide open for abuse. What's to stop anybody in the business of selling online advertising from promising a percentage of ad revenues to charity and then spamming users announcing this fact?
Increased traffic, increased clicks, increased revenue. It's almost worth handing over a large slice of the pie to charities, as long as the initial pie has grown sufficiently in size to still make it worth your while.
And, in the case of CharityUSA, when there wasn't even a pie in the first place, that's got to be a good move.
These emails have caused concern among web users who assume, perhaps not unreasonably, that they are some kind of scam. After all, web users are increasingly treating all unsolicited mail with suspicion.
I've personally been emailed a number of these mails by friends and readers wondering whether they are legitimate - to which there is no clear answer. It would certainly seem that somewhere down the line a number of US charities are indeed benefiting and at this point I can't refute that point at all but this is still a judgment call you'll have to make based on the above information.
While in the main it would seem an innovative way of creating charitable donations you may feel more comfortable going direct to a registered charity of your choice and making a direct cash donation.
CharityUSA has failed to respond to requests for further information about its business.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Geoff Sloan
I was a big advocate of the hungersite when it started, when it _was_ not for profit. If memory serves the original team had to close it (was costing them too much to run) and it was taken over by the business that runs it now (along with the other associated sites which they introduced). I think at the time of the take over or 'rescue' there was indication that some of the revenue was going to pay for the running of the site but I can't remember if profit per se was mentioned.
The key issue here is 'do these charities benefit from punters clicking on the site?' and the answer is yes. You can say sensible donors should give direct and cut out the commercial middle man, but for every hungersite donor who would get it together to do that instead of the easy clicking on the site there will be dozens, hundreds even, who with the best of intentions will still never get round to it.
What finally put me off was the increasingly American focus of the site, though why I should discrimate against the American hungry rather than, say, the African hungry I'm not quite sure...
2. Dave Holmes-Kinsella
I called CharityUSA and the guy who answered it, Brian, was very, very helpful. My first question was "What proportion of the profits go to the partner?" and he immediately and completely answered it; and directed me to the relevant parts of the site so that I could see for myself.
I'm surprised the Will had so much trouble getting a response...
(Ed note. Obviously being in the US, contacting a US business you may have had more luck. For those of us in the UK grappling with an eight-hour time difference it's not so easy. Will contacted CharityUSA using the dedicated press enquiry email address the company provides. CharityUSA has subsequently admitted it did receive the email but failed to reply.)
3. anonymous
I don't mind the questionable charity site so much - after all I am not paying for it, I click only, and if there is some amount of money that goes towards a cause I like it's okay by me. My problem started when I clicked on one of the banners to buy something. This is also supposed to create some charitable donation and I liked the stuff they had. So, I picked a couple of things, put in my credit card information and it was refused. Oh well, I tried a couple of changes (did I really have the right address?) but it didn't work. So, since I didn't want to spend the day trying to buy a pair of charitable socks I decided to let it go. Well, couple of days later I checked my bank statement and they had taken out the money. I got a little nervous, called customer service and the lady told me that they had initially refused the card, then contacted the bank and were told that refusing was wrong and they went ahead and allowed the purchase - sounds weird? Well, little surprise, this was a couple of weeks ago, I haven't seen my purchase, I don't have my money, I never got an order confirmation and I think I'll close that account before more money disappears. And this was the last time I wasted my time with internet "charity".
4. Conartist USA dot com
Someone finally got around to sending me a version of CharityUSA .dot/ com's SPAM. Kudos to Will for writing this article. I have something more general advice on my website that I compiled during recent natural disasters when such scams spike.
To the folks who like this type of for-profit website despite Will's article, mail me cash in an envelope. I promise to donate "royalties" to worthy charities. You have my "word" on it.
Sincerely,
Some Anonymous Entity on the Internet Asking for Donations