Show HN: Humanity Box – Ads that change lives | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Humanity Box – Ads that change lives

humanitybox.com

68 pointsnicksergeant36 comments

Nice initiative, please consider adopting IAB standard ad sizes like 300x250, 728x90, 468x60, etc so you can access to more remnant inventory.

Right now many ad companies use Greenpeace or Red Cross for serving something when they run out of ads. It shouldn't be hard to get some impressions from them, but the standard ad sizes will be a common requirement.

Good luck!

+1 to this. as much as i despise IAB sized advertising, it is the standard and you'll get more adoption.

I get the impression this is more geared towards sites that would run the Deck, Fusion, et al. In other words, sites that tend to have very limited advertising and don't subscribe to the IAB's definition of size standards.

Thanks! Adopting more standard ad sizes as options is a great idea for next steps.

"No money ever changes hands with Humanity Box", but their partner, GiveForward, a for-profit company, seems to charge fees: http://www.giveforward.com/learn#fees.

GiveForward's remarks defending why they are for-profit: http://help.giveforward.com/customer/portal/articles/757696-...

> "Many non-profits spend up to 40% of their resources fundraising...At GiveForward, almost all donations go directly to a person or family."

I might be misunderstanding, but this seems disingenuous. Presumably as a nonprofit, they could continue to raise money through the exact same fee structure they have now. This would not require any additional fundraising resources. Plenty of nonprofits have models that do not require fundraising.

Do they post financials online? Voluntarily disclosing the same information that nonprofits are required to disclose would certainly help their argument.

The point they're making is essentially "since we raise funds for charities at a vastly lower cost to them than virtually any other fundraising effort they make, why shouldn't we make a profit if we can?". A point they could also have made is that a large proportion of charities' (often much higher per dollar raise) fundraising costs go directly or indirectly to profit-making companies anyway.

>why shouldn't we make a profit if we can?

I guess it comes down to the definition of "if we can". Because, if they don't, then more people they are presuming to save might be saved.

I agree. I am 100% for social entreprise, but something about GiveFoward's for-profit model has always rubbed me the wrong way. In fact, I'd say what they are doing gives social enterprise a bad name.

They're simply asking for money from people who are willing to give out of pure kindness, then taking a larger-than-necessary cut (by definition of profit) of that generosity. That means that an outsized proportion of that generosity is going somewhere other than to its intended purpose, and away from sick people in need. More generous donors are then necessary, else goals may not be met and sick people may continue to suffer.

It's a little sickening, really, to have these emotional pleas made on their site and promoted by them, all the while knowing that profit is being made. Paying salaries and expenses? OK. But, going beyond that to profit? Seems a bit predatory.

Then, there's this:

https://www.shareasale.com/shareasale.cfm?merchantID=51956

About a year ago there was a fascinating Econtalk podcast episode with Dan Pallotta, an advocate of for-profit charity organization structures. See http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/pallotta_on_cha.htm...

Much of what he had to say resonated strongly with me. Particularly the discussions around talent/leadership hiring and the advantages of scale and reduced overhead % that can be achieved by bringing a profit-motivated higher level of skills/talent to bear on the problems faced by charitable organizations.

How about one that only runs ads for a true universal healthcare system in America?

Give me a means to host this on my site so that I don't share my users' data and browsing habits with you, and I've got a couple places I'll be happy set it up. For example, a similar drop-in chunk of code and script to host locally, along with a cron that I run once daily to fetch the day's updates.

Would you prefer an iframe embed? I have that planned.

Ummm... maybe? It could work but wouldn't be as preferable - only because that means that for as long as I'm including that on my site, I have to trust you to Do the Right Thing in terms of what you're putting inside of it, with no way to preview it.

You can easily copy our code and do this: https://github.com/nicksergeant/humanitybox.

Actually I stand corrected. You'd need an API key with GiveForward. I could see if they'd let me host the day's campaigns at an API endpoint for custom solutions.

That would be cool if they allow it.

Will let you know.

This is really great. If you're ever interested in expanding into the environmental sector we're at the intersection of both environment and community development and would love to chat.

luke@rainforestpartnership.org

Thanks so much! I'll drop you a note.

This is great. You should work to get publishers to donate x% of ad inventory to charity of their choosing. They can then write off the inventory's value for tax purposes too.

Project Wonderful has been doing a similar thing for a very long time: https://www.projectwonderful.com

Awesome! I had no idea about this. I'm a little confused as to what kind of ads it serves after reading the site, though.

Anyone's. I used to run it for awhile, its mostly been semi-targeted corporate ads.

I think you site is just mock piece for GiveForward. Sort of shill but smart way.

Why not mention in direct and bold words that GiveForward is going to charge money to donors ?

Free ads is good thing but there goes hidden agenda of making money from people's emotion stress.

Also why someone should go to giveforward if there are many other alternatives charging less commission.

Amount of people encashing on people's stress, emotions are increasing dramatically which is not a good thing.

Given that many charities that pay up to 95% of the funds they raise to third party marketing companies, I don't think it would be out of line at all to give the sites hosting these ads a cut of the funds they raise. There's nothing wrong with offering a win-win proposition, and it would get you more traction.

Awesome! I just added it be the separator between blog posts on http://dojo4.com/blog.

Can I see how much our blog helps these causes? It would be cool to get some analytics.

Analytics would be awesome. I'll need to parse the CloudFront logs and make something useful out of them, though...

Just saw this -- http://www.s3stat.com/

Might help you!

And https://www.cloudlytics.com/

Awesome, thanks!

Are the underlines on the ad intentional? Maybe it shouldn't be on the longer description text at least? Makes it look tacky.

Then again, maybe it's good for conversion.

Do you mean the dotted or solid line?

I made the dotted section breakers to break up the ads and blog posts.

Nick did the solid lines within the ad so this might be a better question for him.

Thanks, I meant the solid text underlines on the advertisements themselves. I should've addressed my question to him.

I can't express how much I love this idea. This is excellent way to go about it. I hope you will grow as a platform and this can be standard way to be charitable.

Thanks so much! We hope it grows, too.

it is very inspiring to see that how people are really contributing to pushing humanity forward.

Kudos for your work.

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