Charity Idea, feedback requested

[busterroni]

I have an idea for a bitcoin charity, very similar to http://greatergood.com. I'd like to get feedback and whether or not this is something worth pursuing:

A user goes on the charity's website, and they're greeted with a button. All they have to do is click it and a certain amount of bitcoins (likely 100 satoshi) is donated to charity. The website is run on donations.

Why don't we just donate all of the money to charity and make people click a button, you ask? Because the charity money is earned. While it isn't difficult to do, clicking the button still takes effort. The donations will not all go towards the charity at once, the button will first need to be clicked.

Any feedback?

Thanks

[franky1]

how about research some ACTUAL charities.

weed out the middlemen non profits
weed out the corporate non profits that pay wages

find some front line charitable services that are just one human pulse away from those in need. and make a website listing only those.

get them to put a bitcoin address on their website. then we can donate directly through them. or alternatively for those that do not know who to donate to, they can see your website that explains what each charity does and how many 'degrees of separation' there is between a donator and the people in need. thus helping them choose the most worth while cause.

a good example
seans outpost - the guy asking for donations is the guy making sandwichs for the homeless

a bad example
red cross - a corporation that has more employer wages and expensive building mortgages/leases then the funds they send forward to those in need.

if you dont know this about the red cross then please research deeper. no one wants donation funds to go to pay a rich mans 3rd mortgage, 99% or more should be going to those in need

[busterroni]

how abot research some ACTUAL charities.

weed out the middlemen non profits
weed out the corporate non profits that pay wages

find some front like charitable services that are just one human pulse away from those in need. and make a website listing only those.

get them to put a bitcoin address on their website. then we can donate directly through them. or alternatively for those that do not know who to donate to, they can see your website that explains what each charity does and how many 'degrees of separation' there is between a donator and the people in need. thus helping them choose the most worth while cause.

a good example
seans outpost - the guy asking for donations is the guy making sandwichs for the homeless

a bad example
red cross - a corporation that has more employer wages and expensive building mortgages/leases then the fnds they send forward to those in need.

if you dont know this about the red cross then please research deeper. no one wants donation funds to go to pay a rich mans 3rd mortgage, 99% or more should be going to those in need

Our first project is actually (us, the creators of the charity) baking cookies for homeless Philadelphians, so there is no middleman. Depending on how the first project goes, we may or may not continue to do the work ourselves.

And actually, over 90% of Red Cross funding goes towards its services: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3277#.UyYtFq1dWZ4

Thanks for the feedback

[franky1]

Our first project is actually (us, the creators of the charity) baking cookies for homeless Philadelphians, so there is no middleman. Depending on how the first project goes, we may or may not continue to do the work ourselves.

And actually, over 90% of Red Cross funding goes towards its services: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3277#.UyYtFq1dWZ4

Thanks for the feedback

1) cookies are not a good dietary food product for starving people.
2) research properly, red cross gives less then 90% (dont believe the PR story they pass to the press. read the accounts)

ok here is one example page 477 of http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/annual-report/icrc-annual-report-2012.pdf
OPERATING INCOME
Contributions 1,013,359
Total Operating income 1,013,359

OPERATING EXPENDITURE
Staff-related costs -526,771
Mission costs -59,577
Rentals -104,248
Sub-contracted maintenance -36,840
Purchase of goods and materials -202,034
Financial assistance -16,089
General expenditure -76,269
Depreciation -26,633
Total Operating expenditure -1,048,461

ok so the green are more of what id call funds being used for those in need (although general expenditure is a gray area)
now the stuff i left in black, such as staff wages which accounts for over 50% of donations(blue)... now that is the point i am making.

so roughly 50% goes to pay wages.. 30% goes to goodwill causes and 20% is to cover the mortgages, leases and repairs of all the red cross shops/HQ's and other buildings..

again.. roughly 30% goes to goodwill causes.

so please do research on any non profit you advertise and try to show the "degree's of separation" between donators and frontline people in need, aswell as a accurate % of what reaches frontline people in need.

[grifferz]

The minimum standard transaction is 5430 satoshis (BTC0.0000543).

A person trying to do a 100 satoshi transaction would most likely have it rejected by their wallet software to protect the user.

Assuming they run a custom wallet that allows such a transaction to be created, the transaction would most likely be rejected by all of the peers that the wallet sends it to.

Assuming that the wallet is instructed to send the non-standard transaction to at least one custom node that knows to accept it, those accepting nodes would have to mine a block to includes that transaction.

In short the barriers to getting such a transaction distributed are high.

Even at 5430 satoshis, this is below the mBTC0.1 minimum fee. Such a transaction would be standard, but unlikely to be accepted by a miner, so may never reach your project.

So at minimum your idea calls for users to send mBTC0.101 out of which mBTC0.1 goes to the miners and mBTC0.001 goes to your project.

This seems like too much loss to transaction fees.

Also the mechanism of clicking a button on a web page and having that automatically send a bitcoin payment does not currently exist and probably should never exist as it seems incredibly insecure.

Note that Bitcoin is not really designed for micropayments in the way you describe. It may be possible for some service to be created that holds a wallet of a small number of bitcoins, manages the micropayments and settles up with the recipients at a later date in a single transaction instead of a bazillion tiny ones.

(This will have the same centralisation problems we see today with failing exchanges and other services, so solutions to that problem will need to be applied here too.)

This service in itself sounds more useful than the "click on a button to donate a tiny tiny fraction of a $ in cryptocurrency to a charity" idea IMHO.

[odolvlobo]

I think it is a great idea, but:

1. Donate more than $0.000001 per click. $1 per click is more like it, but you would need to prevent automated clicking.
2. Find big donors that would also spend some marketing budget to publicize your site.
3. Sign up charities to accept bitcoins from your site and publicize your site.

[busterroni]

1) cookies are not a good dietary food product for starving people.

You're right, we will likely end up doing sandwiches or something.

The minimum standard transaction is 5430 satoshis (BTC0.0000543).

...

This service in itself sounds more useful than the "click on a button to donate a tiny tiny fraction of a $ in cryptocurrency to a charity" idea IMHO.

No, the way we'd do it is, every time the button is clicked, a text file goes up a certain amount (for example, if it goes up by .003 every time, and it was at .005, and someone clicks it, it goes up to .008). The donation payments will be sent out manually, and the counter will be reset once the payment is sent out.
I'm not sure what you mean by your last line... what service?

I think it is a great idea, but:

1. Donate more than $0.000001 per click. $1 per click is more like it, but you would need to prevent automated clicking.
2. Find big donors that would also spend some marketing budget to publicize your site.
3. Sign up charities to accept bitcoins from your site and publicize your site.

I think $1 is stretching it, but yes I agree that $0.000001 per click is too little. Automated clicking would be prevented by allowing a certain IP address to click the button once every hour or so.

Thanks for the feedback everyone

[grifferz]

The minimum standard transaction is 5430 satoshis (BTC0.0000543).

No, the way we'd do it is, every time the button is clicked, a text file goes up a certain amount (for example, if it goes up by .003 every time, and it was at .005, and someone clicks it, it goes up to .008).

How will your web site enforce that I actually have a bitcoin balance large enough to pledge BTC0.003?

Let's say I have clicked your button 10 times, thus owe you BTC0.03. How and when does that get sent from me to your site?

Wouldn't a sort of Flattr-but-with-bitcoins approach work a lot better?

[busterroni]

The minimum standard transaction is 5430 satoshis (BTC0.0000543).

No, the way we'd do it is, every time the button is clicked, a text file goes up a certain amount (for example, if it goes up by .003 every time, and it was at .005, and someone clicks it, it goes up to .008).

How will your web site enforce that I actually have a bitcoin balance large enough to pledge BTC0.003?

Let's say I have clicked your button 10 times, thus owe you BTC0.03. How and when does that get sent from me to your site?

Wouldn't a sort of Flattr-but-with-bitcoins approach work a lot better?

No, you don't get the concept

The user doesn't pay a dime. All they need to do is press the button. The sponsors/donations pay for the BTC0.01 donation.

[grifferz]

No, you don't get the concept

The user doesn't pay a dime. All they need to do is press the button. The sponsors/donations pay for the BTC0.01 donation.

Ah okay, I see, I'm sorry.

I'm afraid I have no positive feedback on this idea now I understand it, but just wanted to apologise for misunderstanding you.

[busterroni]

No, you don't get the concept

The user doesn't pay a dime. All they need to do is press the button. The sponsors/donations pay for the BTC0.01 donation.

Ah okay, I see, I'm sorry.

I'm afraid I have no positive feedback on this idea now I understand it, but just wanted to apologise for misunderstanding you.

It's ok If the site were to be created, would you visit it and press the button?

[busterroni]

Anyone else have any ideas?

[franky1]

video adverts.

where a user has to watch a video advert fully, to then have the advert revenue donated to a cause.

examples:
abitback
freedigitalmoney

[busterroni]

video adverts.

where a user has to watch a video advert fully, to then have the advert revenue donated to a cause.

examples:
abitback
freedigitalmoney

Interesting... I'll keep it in mind, thanks

What do you think of the big picture, users click on a button to donate bitcoin?

[natoshisakamoto]

I like the idea, but I think you should make it more interesting than a button.

Make it so they actually have to perform some very tiny task, like describe a picture in a few words, or say which version of a banner ad they like better.

Then, it is more interesting for the user, potentially even addicting, and you can collect money from the company that benefits from the work.

It would be like a charity version of Mechanical Turk...

More interesting for the user, more viral, and more money for the charity!

[franky1]

What do you think of the big picture, users click on a button to donate bitcoin?

the reason i mentioned the video advertising is explained better by this:

I like the idea, but I think you should make it more interesting than a button.

Make it so they actually have to perform some very tiny task, like describe a picture in a few words, or say which version of a banner ad they like better.

Then, it is more interesting for the user, potentially even addicting, and you can collect money from the company that benefits from the work.

It would be like a charity version of Mechanical Turk...

More interesting for the user, more viral, and more money for the charity!

[natoshisakamoto]

Sounds like Franky1 and I are on the same page.

To flesh out the idea some more, A vs. B tests are one of the most basic ways of evaluating competing marketing ideas, so in it's first iteration, it could be a crowdsourced A vs B tester that donates the proceeds from each individual A to B test to charity.

To bring video into the picture, per Franky1's suggestion, you could have an option where the website visitor can watch two different commercials (for Coca Cola, for example), and then say which ad they like better.

A company like Coke gets quite a LOT of value from this, because not only do they find out which commercial is better, they have a fleet of people watching TWO of their commercials in a row.

So, you could definitely donate more than 100 satoshi per click.

If you "gamified" the whole thing, and had badges and points that people could win, people would get addicted to it, and you would earn a lot of money for a good cause. 

[busterroni]

Sounds like Franky1 and I are on the same page.

To flesh out the idea some more, A vs. B tests are one of the most basic ways of evaluating competing marketing ideas, so in it's first iteration, it could be a crowdsourced A vs B tester that donates the proceeds from each individual A to B test to charity.

To bring video into the picture, per Franky1's suggestion, you could have an option where the website visitor can watch two different commercials (for Coca Cola, for example), and then say which ad they like better.

A company like Coke gets quite a LOT of value from this, because not only do they find out which commercial is better, they have a fleet of people watching TWO of their commercials in a row.

So, you could definitely donate more than 100 satoshi per click.

If you "gamified" the whole thing, and had badges and points that people could win, people would get addicted to it, and you would earn a lot of money for a good cause. 

I really like the gamification idea! Two things about this:

• It's pretty difficult to find advertisers to do this. Maybe with a charity companies would be moar generous, but with my faucet I had trouble finding advertisers.
• I don't think I have the technical ability to do the gamification part (badges/points/leveling up/etc). Do you know of anyone who can help with this?

[natoshisakamoto]

Regarding finding advertisers, you could poach them from Mechanical Turk. Because if they are willing to pay that to random workers on MT who are doing A/B comparison tests for them, with the money going to the MT workers and Amazon, they are certainly willing to pay that to a charity that accomplishes the same task, for the same or less money.

Regarding finding a programmer, can't help you there. I'm pretty good at coming up with the ideas, but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to the programming to get them done. 

[busterroni]

Regarding finding advertisers, you could poach them from Mechanical Turk. Because if they are willing to pay that to random workers on MT who are doing A/B comparison tests for them, with the money going to the MT workers and Amazon, they are certainly willing to pay that to a charity that accomplishes the same task, for the same or less money.

Regarding finding a programmer, can't help you there. I'm pretty good at coming up with the ideas, but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to the programming to get them done. 

Ok, thanks for the help