Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 02:41:54 -0400
Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Sender: The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
Comments: Resent-From: crispen@netsquirrel.com
Comments: Originally-From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Subject: TOURBUS -- 15 AUG 01 -- HUNGERSITE / FREEDONATION / HONOR SYSTEM
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TOURBUS Volume 7, Number 07 -- 15 Aug 2001
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\___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/
SIX YEARS of Searchable Archives at http://www.TOURBUS.com !!
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S):
HungerSite / FreeDonation / Charities / Amazon Honor System
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESS(ES):
http://www.freedonation.com
http://www.platinumgrit.com/poke.html
http://www.give.org/
http://www.helping.org/
Howdy, y'all, and greetings once again from hot and muggy Tuscaloosa,
Alabama, the meteorological Vietnam of west central Alabama. :P
Bob Rankin, a Yankee (GASP!), usually writes our Tuesday posts.
However, since Bob was kind enough to cover for me while I finished my
schoolwork at Pepperdine, I decided to give Bob a little vacation.
That's why all of the posts this month have come from little old me.
Don't worry, though. Bob will be back next Tuesday, well-rested after
spending two weeks doing whatever Bob does when he has some free time.
TOURBUS is made possible by the kind support of our sponsors. PLEASE
take a moment to thank each of our sponsors for keeping our little bus
of Internet happiness on the road week after week.
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On with the show ...
In my last post we talked about ways you can sell your old books, CDs,
and other used thingies on Amazon for free. Well, sort of for free.
If you missed that post, you can find it in TOURBUS's archives at
http://listserv.aol.com/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0108B&L=tourbus&P=R2&m=150 .
In my next post we're going to talk about Half.com, another site that
lets you sell your used thingies on the Internet. Today, however, I
want to talk a little bit about online philanthropy -- ways that you
can use the Internet to support organizations that aid others, and
ways that you can use the Internet to have others aid you or your
organization.
Of course, no discussion about online philanthropy would be complete
without mentioning the most famous online philanthropy of them all:
The Hunger Site.
-----------------
Adios, HungerSite
-----------------
I have some bad news, folks: The Hunger Site is dead. :(
When we first visted The Hunger Site back in the summer of 1999 [see
http://tourbus.com/archive/tb072299.htm ] the site was still being run
by John Breen, a computer programmer from Bloomington, Indiana. The
Hunger Site's premise was simple: visit The Hunger Site once a day,
click the "Donate Free Food" button, and a little less than 3 cents
would be donated to an international relief organization.
Managing The Hunger Site's day-to-day operations became too much for
Breen, though, and in February he sold The Hunger Site to
GreaterGood.com, a Seattle-based, for-profit philanthropy and Internet
shopping portal. GreaterGood's sales and advertising revenue fell
sharply this year, and the company was forced to shut its doors -- and
The Hunger Site -- on July 18th. Also closed were GreaterGood's
Rainforest Site, Kids AIDS Site, Child Survival Site, Breast Cancer
Site, and Landmine Site.
----------------
FreeDonation.com
----------------
Looking for a replacement for the now defunct Hunger Site? Take a
look at FreeDonation.com at
http://www.freedonation.com
We first wrote about FreeDonation.com back in March of last year [see
http://listserv.aol.com/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0003D&L=tourbus&P=R358 ] and
Bob and I like the site so much that we have added FreeDonation's URL
to the bottom of every one of our TOURBUS posts since then.
FreeDonation.com provides information about, and lets you make
donations that support:
- Ending hunger
- Saving children from diseases
- Defeating cancer
- Stopping AIDS
- Housing the homeless
- Supporting the arts
- Promoting education
One click of your mouse will result in a donation to a charitable
organization by FreeDonation's sponsors. And you can click as many
times as you like! Over 100,000 donations are made every day by site
visitors, and that number is growing rapidly. According to Niuniu Ji,
the founder of FreeDonation, sponsors pay a few cents every time you
donate, and 100% of the total goes to charity.
And, of course, if you are looking for yet ANOTHER site that will fill
you with an amazing sense of personal satisfaction just by clicking on
a simple Web page button, I *highly* recommend visiting
http://www.platinumgrit.com/poke.html
at least once a day. :P
---------------
Charity Reports
---------------
If you would like to do more than click on a button, two great Web
sites can help you find a charity that both needs your help and that
isn't a fraud. The first is the Better Business Bureau's new Give.org
site at
http://www.give.org/ .
Created by the merger of the National Charities Information Bureau and
the Philanthropic Advisory Service of the Council of Better Business
Bureaus Foundation, Give.org provides detailed information about
hundreds of charitable organizations operating inside the United
States.
The second site is Helping.org at
http://www.helping.org/ .
This site is for both volunteers, helping you locate giving
opportunities, and charities, providing "online resources and tools to
help nonprofits integrate the power of the Internet into their
strategic planning."
-------------------
Amazon Honor System
-------------------
Of course, if you are a Martin Chuzzlewit fan who believes that
"charity begins at home, and justice begins next door," you will be
happy to hear that it is both possible and easy for you to raise money
over the Internet with just a few keystrokes.
Earlier this year our friends at Amazon created something called the
"Amazon Honor System." The short description of the Honor System is
that people donate money to you using their credit cards, Amazon
processes the credit card transactions for you and keeps a cut of the
donations, and you or your organization receive a deposit from Amazon
every couple of weeks.
The long description is that you put a little Amazon advertisement on
your Web page, much like the one that we have over on the left side of
our http://www.tourbus.com/ site. People click on that advertisement
and are taken to a page at Amazon that asks them to enter how much
they would like to donate. They then click on the "Pay now!" button.
According to Amazon,
If you are already an Amazon.com customer using 1-Click, you can
simply click Send and you're finished. If you are already an
Amazon.com customer but don't use 1-Click, we'll ask you to
confirm the credit card you want charged for this payment. Then
you'll review your payment, click Send, and you're finished. If
you are not yet an Amazon.com customer, we'll ask you to create a
password and provide your credit card information. Once you're
an Amazon.com customer, you won't have to reenter your credit
card information again. Then review your payment, click Send,
and you're finished
Amazon keeps 15% of the total payment per transaction plus a 15 cent
service charge. So, if someone donates a dollar to you, Amazon keeps
30 cents and gives you 70 cents. If someone donates 10 dollars,
Amazon keeps $1.65 and gives you $8.35. Like Amazon's Marketplace,
Amazon's fees for its Honor System may seem a little steep until you
consider that Amazon handles every step of the transaction for you.
All you have to do is display a customizable, clickable Amazon Honor
System button on your Web site. That's it.
Does the Amazon Honor Sytem work? Yep. We put one of these clickable
"donate now" ads on our TOURBUS site a few months ago and made about
$50 in a few weeks, all of which was immediately forwarded to the
"let's pay off Patrick's student loans before Regions Morgan Keegan
repossesses Patrick's brain" fund. Not bad for something that we
never even mentioned in any of our TOURBUS posts. ($50 down, $49,950
to go.) :)
-------------------------------------------
Creating an Honor System Button of Your Own
-------------------------------------------
Interested in putting an Amazon Honor System button on your home page
or the home page of a local organization with which you are
affiliated? Here's how to do it.
First, go to
http://www.amazon.com/ ,
scroll down to the very bottom of the page, and click on the "Join
Honor System" link. This should take you to
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/home.html .
Click on the yellow "Join now" button in the left corner of the
screen. You'll be taken to a page that asks you to enter your email
address and Amazon password.
If you haven't yet set up an Amazon merchant account (see last
Thursday's post for step-by-step instructions on how to do this),
Amazon will ask you for some more information.
Eventually, you will be taken to the Honor System First-Time User page.
The first step is to create a "PayPage," the page that everyone
will see when they click on the ad that you are going to put on your
Web site. Click on the "Create your PayPage" button on the right side
of the screen to get started.
The process of creating your PayPage is self explanatory. You can edit
most of the stuff on your PayPage by clicking on any of the
"Edit" buttons. When you are done editing, click on the yellow
"Continue" button.
The next page that appears shows you how your finished PayPage will
look. If you don't like it, click on the "Go back" button an re-edit
your PayPage. Otherwise, click on the "Continue" button.
The next step is to choose a Paybox style. A Paybox is just the
little ad that you are going to put on your Web page. Don't worry
about the words in the Paybox yet -- you'll choose those in the next
step. For now just choose the Paybox style that looks best to you and
then click on the "Use this style" button next to that style.
The next page lets you change the greeting, message, border color, and
(if you want) the payment amount that will appear in your Paybox.
Tweak your Paybox to meet your design needs and then click on the
"Continue" button.
The next page shows you what your finished Paybox will look like. You
can edit your Paybox by clicking on the small "Edit" button, or you
can go on to the next step by clicking on the "Save and Continue"
button.
We're almost done! Yay! (And is it just me, or is setting up an
Amazon Honor System account a HECK of a lot easier than setting up an
Amazon Marketplace account?)
The next page shows you the HTML code for your Paybox. Just cut and
copy it into your Web page's HTML code. There is no graphic for you
to download, and your identifying information is already embedded into
the HTML. Just cut, paste, and go.
That's it! Happy fundraising. :)
----------
A Sad Note
----------
Both Bob and I would like to share our grief at the recent news of the
death of Susan Calcari. Susan was the founder and executive director
of the Internet Scout Report, one of the Internet's most respected
newsletters.
According to our friends at the Scout Report,
Susan's family has set up at scholarship fund to honor her memory
-- donations can be made to "Iron Mountain High School - Susan
Calcari Scholarship Trust," Iron Mountain High School, 300 West
"B" St, Iron Mountain, MI 49801.
The Scout Project is also collecting remembrances from
colleagues, friends, and family and would love to get stories or
recollections you have from your time spent (in person or
virtually) with Susie. Please let us know whether you'd be
comfortable with us publishing your recollections on this page.
You can send these emails to her brother Greg Calcari
(gcalcari@athenet.net) or to Rachael Bower (bower@cs.wisc.edu).
[From http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/about/susan.html ]
My thoughts and prayers are with Susan's family, friends, and
colleagues. Susan will be deeply missed.
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S):
HungerSite / FreeDonation / Charities / Amazon Honor System
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESS(ES):
http://www.freedonation.com
http://www.platinumgrit.com/poke.html
http://www.give.org/
http://www.helping.org/
---------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE WEEK
---------------------------------
SPAY-KERS (noun). Lecturers, or devices that create loud sounds.
Usage: "Kin ya turn down them there spay-kers? My ears is ringin'!"
[Special thanks to Glenn Arnold for today's wurd]
You can find all of the old Southern Words of the day at
http://netsquirrel.com/crispen/word.html
=====================[ Tourbus Rider Information ]===================
The Internet Tourbus - U.S. Library of Congress ISSN #1094-2238
Copyright 1995-2001, Crispen & Rankin - All rights reserved
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=====================================================================
.~~~. ))
(\__/) .' ) )) Patrick Douglas Crispen
/o o \/ .~
{o_, \ { crispen@netsquirrel.com
/ , , ) \ http://www.netsquirrel.com/
`~ '-' \ } )) AOL Instant Messenger: Squirrel2K
_( ( )_.'
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