The Hunger Site

Infobox Website
name=The Hunger Site
logo=


caption=
url=http://www.thehungersite.com/
commercial=Yes
type=For-profit corporation
registration=Optional
owner=CharityUSA
author=John Breen

The Hunger Site is the original click-to-donate site created in 1999 that gets sponsorship from advertisers in return for delivering users who will see their advertisements. The Hunger site encourages visitors to click a button on the site, once per day, asserting that each unique click results in a donation "equivalent" to 1.1 cups of food. The Hunger Site is "not" a charity; it is a for-profit corporation which donates the revenue from its advertising banner to selected charities. As of January 2006, these are Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest) and Mercy Corps.

History

The Hunger Site was started by John Breen, a computer programmer from Bloomington, Indiana, in June 1999. Originally a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, the site became popular rapidly. Faced with increasing costs, Breen sold the site to GreaterGood, "a Seattle-based online shopping mall that gave part of its sales to charity" for an undisclosed amount in February 2000. ["In a charitable mood? Just pick, then click." Tamar Lewin. "The New York Times". 11 December 2000.] In July 2001, following the dot-com bubble crash, GreaterGood ceased operations after losing $26 million dollars in venture capital. In 2001, CharityUSA.com, LLC, a privately held, for-profit company based in Seattle, assumed control of the company for one million dollars [ "Asia Week": Enterprise [http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/enterprise/0,8782,181187,00.html] ] . CharityUSA owns and operates various click-to-donate-sites. CharityUSA currently claims that 100% of the website's sponsor advertising revenue is paid to the aforementioned non-profit partners, however, the company does not publicly disclose the amounts it actually donates or the salaries of its executives. [ "Epinions": Good will, or private gain? [http://www.epinions.com/content_125513928324] (online review of the site)] The Commercial Fundraiser Profile Report page on the Secretary of State's web page for the state of Washington [Washington Secretary of State Commercial Fundraiser Profile Report page [http://www.secstate.wa.gov/charities/search_detail_cfr.aspx?cfr_id=20823] ] calculates the percentage that CharityUSA returns to its charity clients as being 16% of contributions. However, in a written response in the comments section on the same page, CharityUSA disputes this calculation, claiming that the Secretary of State included in its contribution total some contributions that were actual sales of product and advertising. At issue is that CharityUSA defines direct cash contributions from visitors to its charity clients sites separately from the click-thru revenue from advertisers that gets paid as royalities back to the charity clients. In its written response, CharityUSA states that 100% of cash contributions get returned to its charity clients. CharityUSA did not describe the formula used to calculate its royality payments for advertising and merchandise sales nor did it post the percentage of royalites to total revenue. In recent years, the site has moved from banner advertising into the marketing of merchandise, promising that each dollar spent results in donations equivalent to two cups of food.

Mechanics

According to Martin Lewis at "The Guardian", The Hunger Site probably doesn't make money for every click, only on clicks to the sponsor's sites, and those clicks might be worth 30¢ each. Each click on the "feed the starving" button he estimates as worth 0.7¢, based on average click-through rates. [ Martin Lewis. "Make it your new year resolution to feed the world for free." "The Guardian". 17 December 2005.] The Hunger Site gets most of its traffic from the US.

Several websites were operated by GreaterGood in association with the Hunger Site but became defunct once CharityUSA.com bought GreaterGood, including The Child Survival Site and The Kids AIDS Site, both rebranded into The Child Health Site, and The Landmine Site, which raised funds to provide prostheses to people who lost limbs in landmine explosions. At present, CharityUSA operates a number of other benefit-to-charity themed advertising and shopping sites, including The Rainforest Site and The Breast Cancer Site.

On 27 December 2007 the following amounts of food are claimed by CharityUSA.com to be donated by click-throughs:

The Animal Rescue Site (focused on stray pets): 30.9 tonnes [Daily Results - The Animal Rescue Site]
The Hunger Site (focused on helping human hunger): 9.2 tonnes [Daily Results - The Hunger Site]

ee also

*FreeRice

References

* [http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/charity/hungersite.asp Snopes Urban Legend Entry]

External links

* [http://www.thehungersite.com/ The Hunger Site]
* [http://charityusa.com CharityUSA.com]