Charity Just Got More Daring | Hacker News Reader

Charity Just Got More Daring

mashable.com

26 pointsblakejennelle17 comments

I think those guys mydunktank, like Getupandmove, are interesting because it is behavior programming (anbdy a better name?): if you X(give money to charity) I do Y(crazy dare). Action graphs vs chitchat/linksharing social graphs

This idea is pretty cool. I think the fee is resonable but maybe the website should use some of its income to contribute back to the dares.

What's the revenue source for mydunktank? It's not raking in a percentage of the money supposed to go to charity, is it?

From the FAQ, "Our transaction fee is $0.99 + 9% of each payment."

Wow, nine percent sounds like a lot of money to be creaming off a charitable donation. I might have some ethical issues with this.

edit: Especially since now I look at the site, it appears from the user's point of view that they could go through the entire donation process without ever knowing that mydunktank is taking nine percent. I had to click through to the "terms and conditions" and read term 1(b)(iii) to find any reference to the fees at all.

It even tells me "I understand that my money will be donated to (say) The Spina Bifida Resource Network even if this dare doesn't win.", when it should say "I understand that 91% of my money will be donated to The Spina Bifida Resource Network..."

Hey - Our FAQ states our fees as well: http://mydunktank.com/pages/faq#transactionfees

That said, good feedback about making it clearer.

Any response to the comment that 9% seems awfully steep? That's worse than Coinstar.

I would assume this is a chicken and egg problem if they're bootstrapping the startup. On the one hand, they probably need the fee to be this high while the amount of users is small so that they can sustain themselves and grow the business. On the other hand, something seems fishy to the end user when they see that such a huge chunk of their donation isn't going to the target recipient.

Some things that might make users more comfortable: 1)the declaration of what type of corporation they are and/or 2) whether they plan to reduce their take of donations as they reach certain milestones.

Are you a nonprofit?

At 9% + ? You must be kidding, right?

It's not unreasonable.

The [I Do Foundation](http://www.idofoundation.org/about/faq/) charges 8%, and they are a 501(c)3 nonprofit. A lot of that is credit card processing fees.

That said, I won't encourage charitable donations through a for-profit company whose business is charitable donations.

Our fees are very reasonable for what we provide: 1. A viral fundraising format that significantly increases donations. 2. One-on-one help to market fundraisers. This is something charities typically pay consultants $100+ per hour to do. 3. All the standard donation processing and reporting that the other guys do.

We're the only fundraising website to do step up and do this. Online fundraising is begging for innovation and causes need more help than ever raising money.

The services that provide comparable marketing support typically charge much more. The donation websites that provide only a profile page and basic payment processing average 7-8% or more.

Professional fundraising consultants hired by most major charities charge much, much more.

MyDunkTank provides a great deal of support at a very reasonable cost.

One-on-one help to market fundraisers. This is something charities typically pay consultants $100+ per hour to do.

Do you provide one-on-one help because it's a necessary part of your business model? Or do you do it because you currently have very few customers?

Do you plan to scale your one-on-one help? If your customer base suddenly expanded by a factor of twenty, would you say "Holy crap! We need to immediately hire a lot more people so we can give more one-on-one help to each and every one of our thousands of customers!"?

What we've found is that people want and need a lot of help marketing their fundraisers -- especially individuals, because they don't do this for a living.

We're already starting to automate some of this. That said, I think there will always be a need and opportunity to provide help from a real human being, whether that's a member of our team or a community of users.

We spend a lot of time one-on-one with each fundraiser to help them promote it and raise significantly more money than they would otherwise.

That's the same line of reasoning many of the "on the ground" fundraising companies use (i.e., the ones that send people to street corners to solicit donations... many of them do not actually work for the charities they're soliciting for).

Just because you have (ostensibly) a net positive impact on fundraising for a good cause does not remove your obligation to behave ethically and divulge pertinent information. 9% is a lot of money, and this needs to be a lot more visible than it is now.

Think critically about this: if your rates are widely known across the website, would this positively or negatively impact donation rates? By how much? The next pertinent question is: is your business model built fundamentally upon user ignorance of your cut?

We're on the same page about transparency. Any mention of fees is going to reduce donation rates regardless of what the fees are. That's okay though - the information should still be clear.

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