I have an idea I think, but I dont know what to do with it

DirtyDirtyVagrant

While I was lamenting over not having enough money for college, it occured to me that I should 'make' the money. And not just for myself, but for as many other people as possible.

I have a model in my head for what amounts to a charity based scholarship fund for everyone. It's based, in part, on much the same logic as the million dollar homepage. Ads ads ads, arranged in as tactful a manner as possible, with links for donations to this particular thing and whatever else.

So essentially you have a website where people go to donate money to whatever charity. This, Child's Play, bill and melinda gates, etc, and while they're doing that, donating the money, they're also helping the website to earn the money.

What it would amount to is, like I said earlier, a scholarship fund for people in screwed up situations.

Am I totally off my rocker, or could this actually work if executed properly?

Lail

Being that you'll probably be using Google Ads or something like that, you'll need A LOT of traffic to earn any sort of significant ad revenue.

Luck3ySe7en

Hehe screwed up. Thats why im in the military now :winky: . But mainly by choice with a side of screw up.

Willeth

So if I'm understanding it, you're proposing to be essentially a middleman for donations to other charities, scraping off a bit for another charity before giving it to the intended recipient?

I don't know how to feel about that.

Daenris

Willeth wrote: »

So if I'm understanding it, you're proposing to be essentially a middleman for donations to other charities, scraping off a bit for another charity before giving it to the intended recipient?

I don't know how to feel about that.

Well, I'm not sure, but I think he was just suggesting the site make money through ads, not actually skimming off the donations.

I don't really see this as being a successful idea, as you're just an index page for charities, but at the same time it wouldn't be hard to set up so you're not really losing anything by trying. Just don't get your hopes up. As mentioned, you'd have to have huge amounts of traffic to be making a significant amount off the ads.

SpongeCake

Ignoring my natural skepticism that nothing anybody ever does will ever be successful, I can see a major flaw in this concept regarding the psychology of charity. In my experience, people don't sit down and say "I feel like giving to charity, I wonder who is worthy of my dollaridoos", they generally give to a cause they feel at least something about i.e. a family member died of cancer so donate to Cancer Research.

You're going to be relying on a large group of people deciding they want to give to charity but not knowing what charity they want to give to. You have to ask yourself if there are enough of those kinds of people to make any impact.

DirtyDirtyVagrant

Well I dunno. I guess it does sound kind of screwed up looking at it. I really didn't mean to imply that I would be 'scraping money off the top', because damn. Honestly, if I cant make a dime off of it, I still want to do something.

Edit:

Ignoring my natural skepticism that nothing anybody ever does will ever be successful, I can see a major flaw in this concept regarding the psychology of charity. In my experience, people don't sit down and say "I feel like giving to charity, I wonder who is worthy of my dollaridoos", they generally give to a cause they feel at least something about i.e. a family member died of cancer so donate to Cancer Research.

You're going to be relying on a large group of people deciding they want to give to charity but not knowing what charity they want to give to. You have to ask yourself if there are enough of those kinds of people to make any impact.

See, but which cancer research fund to they want to contribute to? I'm almost certain there are dozens. Let me give it a bit more thought and then I will repost.

shutz

You have to provide something worthwhile for people to come to your site. At the very least, you need to have enough content for Google to index you properly.

Here are some ways you could make your idea work:

1- Create a site ABOUT charities. Catalog and index any and all charities you can, along with descriptions, information, possibly user comments, or perhaps some way for the people who are helped by those charities to put up their thanks. By making it a comprehensive site, someone looking to donate to a particular charity might end up on your site on the way to the charity's site, and at the same time, you would be providing a potentially useful service. This could also include a section that lists all the bad charities, whether they're phony, or just have a bad record of actually providing for their targets (as in, some charities have such a huge organization that only a small percentage of the money you donate actually goes towards what it's supposed to, while the rest pays for the charities' employee salaries, offices, etc.)

2- Put something up on that site that has something to do with charity, but at the same time, is entertaining or intriguing or at least, quirkily innovative. That's how the million-dollar homepage made its success, and it's why another, too similar project would now fail. The novelty of it was enough to propel it towards success. Another, similar example was the "trading a paperclip for a house" sequence. Anyone who tries this again is almost certain to have little to no success, unless they give it a significant twist.

Regardless of what you decide to do, it'll probably require you to work harder at it than you think. Schemes where you do little work and somehow make money rarely work. Don't try to find an easy way out.

One last thing: do not try anything where you end up keeping a cut (however small) from the money people donate to other charities. Even though your motives might be pure, it's still wrong. Making money off of ads while you link to charities is not a problem, however.

DirtyDirtyVagrant

shutz wrote: »

One last thing: do not try anything where you end up keeping a cut (however small) from the money people donate to other charities. Even though your motives might be pure, it's still wrong. Making money off of ads while you link to charities is not a problem, however.

Yes. I am way ahead of you on that one. I didn't mean to even hazily suggest that I might be trying to do that.

Let me see where my mind wanders this weekend.

Also thanks to everyone for not dumping on an ill-conceived thread. It's actually in a good place now that real advice is being given, but before not so much.