 | CLB 99-07 Bulletin Board: The Hunger Site - Clicking to Feed the Starving |
From: "Clergy Mailing List"
Tue, 12 Oct 1999
Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list Bulletin Board No. 99-07 -- Mon 11 Oct 1999
Item: The Hunger Site - Clicking to Feed the Starving
Every so often, there is a 'good cause' we think you would like to know
about. This is one of them.
Ron Clough (Moderator, Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list)
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This is an article that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on
Friday 17 September under the title "The mouse that fed 2 million
mouths" by Jon Casmir.
A web site that allows anyone to donate food to the starving without
paying? It sounds too good to be true, but a new US venture, The Hunger
Site, has achieved exactly that, channelling the cold, financial logic
of online advertising to the warmer, social purposes of charity.
In the 4 months since it opened its doors, The Hunger Site has provided
more than 2 million meals to the needy. And all through the simplest of
actions on the part of the Web community, a visit to the site and a
single mouse click.
The site in question takes no commission and all money is handled
directly by the World Food Program, the frontline UN agency which
delivers food aid to more than 80 countries. Here's how the whole
scheme works.
Hunger site (www.thehungersite.com) users are met by map of the world.
Every 3.6 seconds, a country somewhere flashes black, signifying a
death due to hunger.
India...China...Mozambique...country after country dims in memoriam.
Three quarters of these deaths, the site explains, are of children
under the age of five. Having tugged at your heartstrings, it then
offers the chance to do something positive. Below the map is a button
marked Donate Free Food.
Click on it and the site brings up a Thank You For Your Donation page.
But you haven't paid anything have you? Well, yes and no. The donation
is made by a third party, paid for by the site's sponsors, whose
postage stamp-sized ads appear in neat rows below the thank you. In
effect, you rent your eyeballs to them.
Every time their ad is looked at, each of the Hunger site sponsors pays
half a US cent. That half a cent buys a quarter of a cup of rice,
wheat, maize or another staple (it depends on the diet of the region -
beans, millet, barley and sorghum are other regulars).
There is space on the Thank You page for nine ads (this week, there has
usually been six). Fully booked, that's more than two cups of food
every time the button is clicked.
"Our sponsors pay for the donations as a form of advertising and public
relations," the site says. "For some it is simply good advertising
...It allows them to get their name in front of people, to be
associated with a good cause, and to generate good will towards their
company."
Indeed. And not only is it good advertising morally, it's good in the
economic sense as well, a cheap deal for the sponsor. The industry
standard for advertising payment is 3.5 cents per impression (5 cents
in Australia). Half a cent per set of eyes should be pretty appealing.
The hunger site invoices its sponsors on a weekly basis. They then make
their payments directly to the World Food Program, which receives
copies of all invoices.
The site takes no cut at any stage and in the interests of
transparency, explains that of each cent, 66 per cent is spent on food,
10 per cent on the WFP's overheads and 24 per cent on transportation.
The hunger site opened on June 1. In its first month there were 172,739
donations. In July, that figure passed the million mark. In August it
passed 2 million. The first 13 days of September saw 833,841 people
click on the button - software prevents any visitor from making more
than one donation each day.
[On Monday 13 September] 84,430 people from 109 countries ... made a
donation. There were six sponsors on the day, so each time the button
was clicked, a cup and a half of food was donated. That's 126,645 cups,
7.2 tonnes of food going to where it's needed.
So who's behind this exercise in charitable thinking? It's hard to tell
from the site, which carries the simple explanation that it was
"founded by a private individual as an independent and non- partisan
Internet site to help alleviate hunger in the world".
By e-mail, that individual reveals himself as John Breen, a 42-year old
father of two from Indiana, a man with an economics degree who has
"worked with computers most of my life". Breen says he is keen to
protect his privacy, but more than this, "the site and the people who
donate should be more important than myself".
"My original idea was to supply educational materials (pencils, paper,
books) to children in developing countries using a similar donation
plan," he says. "Then I found out that hunger was a major factor in
preventing students being able to learn, so I shifted the focus of the
site."
Though attracting sponsors in the clamour of the Internet marketplace
has not been easy (his modest operation means he's reliant on being
approached), Breen is more than just pleased with the enormous traffic
growth, fuelled by word of mouth and media coverage. He's as impressed
and moved by the success of his idea as anyone else would be. "I am
staggered by all the good people in the world," he says.
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End of Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list Bulletin Board No. 99/07
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