A click-to-donate site is a website where users can click a button to generate a donation for a charity without spending any of their own money. The money for the donation comes from advertisers whose banners are displayed each time a user clicks the button. [1] [2] While not directly contributing (though many sites offer additional ways of support), visitors are making a difference in the sense that, had they not visited, no donation would have been given.
In most cases, the donation generated by each user only amounts to a few cents, but the goal is to accumulate enough clicks to add up to a significant amount.
Many charities launched this style of program in the late 1990s. However, the constriction of online advertising spending around 2001 following the dot-com collapse caused many sites to be closed. Yet there are still many in operation, notably Freerice, [3] The Hunger Site, and Por Los Chicos. [4]
Flattr and CentUp (now defunct) used click-to-donate technology on many sites instead of being centralized on just one. [5]
Alms are money, food, or other material goods donated to people living in poverty. Providing alms is often considered an act of charity. The act of providing alms is called almsgiving.
A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as blood or organs for transplant.
Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather money for non-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises.
The Hunger Site is the original click-to-donate site created in 1999 that gets sponsorship from advertisers in return for delivering users who will see their advertisements. The Hunger site encourages visitors to click a button on the site, once per day, asserting that each unique click results in a donation "equivalent" to 1.1 cups of food. The Hunger Site is not a charity; it is a for-profit corporation which donates the revenue from its advertising banner to selected charities. Currently, these are Millennium Promise, Food Recovery Network, Partners in Health, Feeding America and Mercy Corps.
Matching funds are funds that are set to be paid in proportion to funds available from other sources. Matching fund payments usually arise in situations of charity or public good. The terms cost sharing, in-kind, and matching can be used interchangeably but refer to different types of donations.
Street fundraising consists of various ways of asking for donations on behalf of a charity. Those asking for donations may be paid employees of the charity, or they may be volunteers.
Gift Aid is a UK tax incentive that enables tax-effective giving by individuals to charities in the United Kingdom. Gift Aid was introduced in the Finance Act 1990 for donations given after 1 October 1990, but was originally limited to cash gifts of £600 or more. This threshold was successively reduced in April 2000 when the policy was substantially revised and the minimum donation limit removed entirely. A similar policy applies to charitable donations by companies that are subject to the UK corporation tax.
Gifts in kind, also referred to as in-kind donations, is a kind of charitable giving in which, instead of giving money to buy needed goods and services, the goods and services themselves are given. Gifts in kind are distinguished from gifts of cash or stock. Some types of gifts in kind are appropriate, but others are not. Examples of in-kind gifts include goods like food, clothing, medicines, furniture, office equipment, and building materials. Performance of services, providing office space or offering administrative support, may also be counted as in-kind gifts.
Cause marketing is marketing done by a for-profit business that seeks to both increase profits and to better society in accordance with corporate social responsibility, such as by including activist messages in advertising.
The Rainforest Site is a "click-to-donate" website, launched in May 2000, that uses ad-based revenue to conserve land in Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay and other locations worldwide. In addition, a portion of funding goes to preserve old-growth forest in the state of Washington United States. The Rainforest Site is owned and operated by Tim Kunin and Greg Hesterberg, co-owners of the for-profit company, CharityUSA.com, LLC.
Website monetization is the process of converting existing traffic being sent to a particular website into revenue. The most popular ways of monetizing a website are by implementing pay per click (PPC) and cost per impression (CPI/CPM) advertising. Various ad networks facilitate a webmaster in placing advertisements on pages of the website to benefit from the traffic the site is experiencing.
Mobile donating refers to donating using a mobile device. Mobile donating is primarily done through an SMS or a phone call.
Founded in 1999, MissionFish is the partner charity of eBay, which runs auction and shopping websites in 30 countries. Through MissionFish, eBay users are able to donate to registered nonprofit organisations when they buy and sell through the eBay.com and eBay.co.uk sites. The programmes are called eBay Giving Works and eBay for Charity, respectively.
(Lil) Green Patch was a Facebook application developed by Ashish Dixit and David King that simulated a small garden on a Facebook user's profile. By tending their and their friends' gardens, the Facebook users were able to raise money for The Nature Conservancy to save the rainforest. In September 2008, it was rated as the number one application on Facebook, ahead of Texas HoldEm Poker. In April 2009, it had slid to a sixth-place ranking.
Flattr was a Swedish-based microdonation subscription service, where subscribers opted in to pay a monthly patronage to help fund their favourite websites and creators. It shut down in November 2023.
Xperedon is an initiative started in 2010, intended to revolutionise the way people make charitable donations. The company's website allows users to add a percentage of their monthly expenditure which is then donated to charity. The website allows customers to then disperse that amount to as many charities as desired, and is the first major initiative to match what a person spends to their level of charitable donation. As of June 2011, Xperedon has over 5250 different charities in 25 countries available to support listed on its website, however, new charities can be proposed by anyone. Xperedon does not charge charities for being listed on its website.
CrowdRise is a for-profit crowdfunding platform that raises charitable donations. CrowdRise was founded by Edward Norton, Shauna Robertson, and the founders of Moosejaw, Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. CrowdRise was acquired in 2017 by GoFundMe.
YouCaring was a crowdfunding website for personal, medical, and charitable causes. The company was a Certified B corporation based in San Francisco, California. YouCaring did not take a percentage of funds raised on its site, or charge those raising funds a fee. The company relied on voluntary donations from donors to fund operations. YouCaring was acquired by GoFundMe in 2018.
Freerice, originally FreeRice, is a website-based application that allows players to donate rice to families in developing countries by playing a multiple-choice quiz game. For every question the user answers correctly, ten grains of rice are donated via the United Nations World Food Programme. There are over 50 categories, including: English Proverbs, Multiplication Table, German, Flags of the World, and World Heritage Sites. The categories can be played on up to five difficulty levels, from easiest to hardest, depending on the subject. A user's total score is displayed as a mound of rice and the number of grains earned.
BT MyDonate was a not-for-profit online fundraising service provided by United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group for charities in the UK, and was launched on 6 April 2011 as part of BT's investment to the community. It closed on 30 June 2019 so BT can focus its support in other areas including how they'll continue to support charities, and due to the many alternative fundraising platforms available, including several fee-free offers, to the UK.