by irollboozers on 10/1/14, 6:27 PM with 94 comments
by travisfischer on 10/1/14, 8:11 PM
- I sign up to donate at least a dollar a day.
- There is a growing list of non-profits supported.
- I get emails with newly added ones.
- For each non-profit I get to choose to either:
a) add a full additional dollar a day for that organization
or
b) add the new organization to a list of organizations that split my daily existing donation amount.
or
c) skip it.
I dislike this implementation for a number of reasons.
* From the non-profits perspective, re-occuring and emotionally invested donations are much more valuable than a one off big shot of money.
* From my perspective I will never donate to an unknown entity regardless of filtering criteria. I have limited resources and believe I can have the impact I want to have by chosen where to use those resources.
* If this system catches on I imagine it will result in many a controversy, which may just be the price dollaraday.co is willing to pay, but it sure seems like an unnecessary distraction.
by jawns on 10/1/14, 7:10 PM
However, I _hate_ the idea of donating to a black box. True, Dollar a Day publishes its criteria for selecting nonprofits, but those criteria are highly subjective. And, according to the FAQ, there's no way to opt out of donating to a particular featured nonprofit that you don't want to support. Heck, even if you cancel your monthly "subscription," your money will still go to all of the nonprofits that are in the queue for the rest of the month.
I understand the organization's decision to make things simple to start out, but I hope that it soon offers a way to opt out on a charity-by-charity basis (it could be as simple as a link in the daily email), and pro-rated refunds so that if you decide to stop donating on Day 1 of the month, you're not on the hook for days 2-30.
by mankyd on 10/1/14, 7:09 PM
What's the differentiation?
by cbr on 10/1/14, 8:16 PM
by ryana on 10/1/14, 8:20 PM
However, I do worry about that last point. One of the most important part of NPO fundraising is around building a relationship with the donor. Dollar a Day seems to take that piece out of the fundraising process, for better or worse.
Best case, outsourcing your donor outreach to Dollar a Day opens you up to thousands of new donors who get to learn more about you.
Worst case, it's Groupon for non-profit donations; taking away your ability to market your brand and spamming you into a few million inboxes who will likely unsubscribe after a 3-6 months of daily emails.
by picardo on 10/1/14, 7:45 PM
by whyenot on 10/1/14, 8:07 PM
I _DO_ wish you would display this information a little more prominently instead of burying it in the FAQ. There are many companies that fundraise for non-profits that take a cut of donations and are _not_ nonprofit themselves. You aren't doing this. Good!
Q: Is Dollar a Day a nonprofit?
A: Yes, we’re a nonprofit too! Dollar a Day was built by a team of (almost entirely) volunteers, and our minimal expenses are covered by a few direct donations. Dollar a Day makes no money, in any way, from donations on this site.
by po on 10/2/14, 12:53 AM
by exacube on 10/1/14, 8:05 PM
by Goopplesoft on 10/1/14, 7:18 PM
by mertd on 10/2/14, 2:07 AM
Lump sum method has two advantages:
1) Easier to keep track of for tax filing.
2) Your employer might have a donation match program. Again it is easier to file a form and tell them to make a matching donation.
by Duhveed on 10/1/14, 11:36 PM
More than that though, I think it'd be neat if this group hooked up with giv2giv.org and each day/dollar would create a new, well-funded endowment. And maybe give users a way to vote for their favorite reruns or something so there'd be a bit of a feedback loop.
Anyway, congrats to them for a basically good idea. I agree that there are some refinements that would make it a bit more palatable for me personally, but I dig it. I love innovation in this space.
by cophelan on 10/1/14, 9:31 PM
My biggest lessons learned were:
1) Find and vetting 24 great organizations was difficult. 2) Getting people to spend $15/year (how we covered costs) was a challenge, so keep your expectations on audience engagement incredibly low. 3) Revenue through sponsorships won't keep the lights on.
Regardless - best of luck.
by kolev on 10/1/14, 9:27 PM
by grimtrigger on 10/1/14, 8:40 PM
The detractors are missing two important points:
1) People like being part of a larger movement.
2) People like knowing their donation as impact. I would rather be part of a team donating $1,000 then just donating $1.
I signed up for the free email, but if I like what I see I'll be joining.
by vacri on 10/2/14, 1:09 AM
The tax-deductability of charitable donations has always sat weirdly with me. It's not exactly charitable if you're not actually sacrificing anything; it's more a rearrangement of your tax allocation. That can be a good thing in and of itself, but if you're going to claim donations on tax, it's not really something you should get a warm, fuzzy feeling for (in my opinion). I have a regular payment to MSF happening every month, and it doesn't really sit right with me that I can claim it on tax (and I don't).
On the other hand, this is a good argument against the libertarian dot-point that private charity 'would happen if we weren't taxed so much'. Given that you can offset your tax by your charitable donations, it becomes a zero-sum game, so why aren't people currently donating at the levels libertarians say they theoretically would? In the US, you can deduct up to half your gross income from tax, and given that the tax load is less than 50%, you can at least convert your income tax to charitable donations, and then start this theoretical "extra charity" that would apparently spring into action.
by shbhrsaha on 10/2/14, 1:10 AM
by EGreg on 10/1/14, 8:40 PM
Usually the way to avoid voting attacks is to take the hotornot approach and only present random startups for rating by users. But that doesn't prevent sybil attacks - in order to prevent those you need signup to be expensive. How do you do that? Requiring text to a mobile number used to work until Google Voice. Now what?
by zemaj on 10/2/14, 12:04 AM
by antaviana on 10/1/14, 10:47 PM
by joshdance on 10/1/14, 9:26 PM
by alexbecker on 10/1/14, 10:25 PM
by kyro on 10/1/14, 8:44 PM
by nosage on 10/1/14, 8:44 PM
by monkmartinez on 10/2/14, 2:45 AM
by menzoic on 10/2/14, 12:28 PM
by Dewie on 10/1/14, 7:57 PM
This kind of thing is different from people going door to door, collecting money; instead of someone actively going to you in order to convince you to give to some "good" (according to them) cause, you are the active participant. There isn't much immediate social guilt of having to say "no", in this case. People who collect for charities in the usual, door to door or through other means of confronting people probably want to play on people's feeling of social dignity and that they don't want to appear to be stingy. So then the average person ends up giving to a lot of different charities - because they all ask for a little at a time - and knowing little about each one.
But why would I deliberately want to diversify my charity, if I'm the one who is actively subscribing to it? Isn't it better to research a few good ones, and actively pursue those? Why give up that choice to some other entity, and make it practically impossible for me to keep up with all the different causes (you can't and won't feel motivated to research where every dollar you give goes to, when it all goes to different things). Another user here has it right - it's a black box. And apparently for no good reason.
by wbandxx on 10/2/14, 1:23 AM
2. How do these Organizations pay for developer costs , website, office maintenance and employee salary ?
Do they take cut from donation and donate rest of the money ? If that's the case then its pretty much scam.
Susan Komen for women's breast cancer collect millions of dollar. Innocent people pay thinking money is going to cancer research. But they instead pay their CEO some $500k+ salary. What a shame !
I must ask this is starting a non-profit new legal scam in United States to collect money ?
