Have you ever used a Charity Portal or a Charity Mall?

For years we had an arrangement with one of those Charity Malls. I even had a domain name, "YouthCharityMall.org" that was ours that forwarded to their portal. I do not believe we ever got a check from them.

My feeling is that the days of charity malls is over. With Amazon and all the other major on-line shopping portals, these charity malls can't compete.

Dear michaelbn,

What nonprofit do you work for? How long have you been using GiveStream? Has it brought in significant revenues? If so, how did you promote it?

Robert

Hi Jjasonw,

I'm Caroline Bernadi, co-host for this Gift-Giving online event and co-founder of Maatiam (www.maatiam.com), a venture that turns online shopping into giving.

In contrary, I believe that socially-conscious shopping is a growing trend as well as online shopping which still grows at 17.5% a year. And nonprofits can greatly benefit from those gift-giving tools. We've had some great results with nonprofits that have been creating awareness about it and we found that our users are very loyal compare other online shopping sites. Shopping for a good cause appears to be sticky.

Caroline

Most charity malls are not at all transparent about the split of the affiliate fee between the nonprofits and the mall operator. Has anyone seen a good side-by-side comparison?
Robert Tolmach

Robert,

I do agree that transparency is key. At Maatiam, we keep a third to fund our costs and growth and give two third to partnered nonprofits. Our donation rate is 30% to 50% higher than our main competitors.

Caroline

Robert,
Sorry for not being clear in my previous post. I'm one of the GiveStream
co-founders and my role is to encourage non-profits to give it a try and then help them to maximize the GiveStream Center effectiveness both as a fundrasing tool and as a community enhancer. GiveStream is new and as such it improves on the concept of Buy & Donate by adding an innovative comparison search engine, community tools such as a free newsletter creator, branded non-profit URL and much more.

jjasonw,
I understand that your non-profit Shop&Donate experience yielded nothing. That's exactly what we intend to change! We think that Shop&Donate rarely occurs outside of a strong community. That's why we intend to help non-profits to strengthen their online communities by providing community tools that help them meet 3 goals: 1) strengthen their community relations, 2) fundraise in a meaningful and effective way, and 3) provide the supporter with a new ability to compare products and prices that will yield the best deal both to him and the non-profit.

rtolmach,
I agree, we thought a lot about how to make it more clear both to the supporters and the non-profit. For the sake of simplicity we show exactly how much of the cost for each product will be donated to the organization as supporters shop. We provide detailed reports for the non-profits so that the amount of money they earn is completely clear. We keep a portion of the commision provided us by the merchants so we are able to cover our costs, develop new exciting tools and give the best support. But the donation amounts shown for the products in the GiveStream Center shops are after we deduct our administrative costs, so supporters always know exactly how much money from their purchase will go to the non-profit.

I'll be happy to provide more details, contact me on any issue.

Michael

A new player in the arena is Shop2Donate.org 

They have the highest % return in this niche.  Shop2Donate.org returns 100% of the affiliate cash back to the nonprofit.  The concept is phenomenal since most "shopping portals" keep 50% - 70% for themselves.

We think it's a great model and one that will produce results for NPOs inthis trying economic time.

Dear Tim,

It appears that your firm has a business relationship with Shop2Donate.  If so, please disclose it.  Their whois record shows that your firm is hosting their nameserver, so it appears that you have a relationship.  And if you have used their service, please let us know your results and how you achieved them.

Robert