Not As Great As You Think
Written: Feb 19 '01
The Bottom Line
I asked 10 supported charities what they thought. 4 of 5 respondents were not happy.
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GreaterGood.com seems like a great idea, but falls short according to the charities it claims to assist.
What Is GreaterGood.com?
GreaterGood.com is a web-based shopping portal. Users visit GreaterGood.com, select a charity from the hundreds listed on the site, then visit any of 168 internet shopping sites to purchase goods and services. GreaterGood.com receives an affiliate fee (usually between 5% and 15% of the total purchase) from the shopping site which it then splits with the selected charity.
Who Is GreaterGood.com?
GreaterGood.com is a Seattle based for-profit company that was founded in December 1998.
Paul Goodrich, Chairman and one of the founders, is a partner with Madrona Investment Group and has a background in brokerage firms, wireless internet technology and as a venture capitalist. The remaining three board members have backgrounds in the retail, marketing, technology and investment fields.
Not a single person listed on the site as part of the management team lists any non-profit experience.
Where Can I Shop?
At the time of this writing there are 168 links on GreaterGood's merchant list, including nine different sites at Amazon.com, Avon, Buy.com, Columbia House, DisneyStore.com, Fingerhut, Nordstrom, Petsmart.com, uBid, and WalMart.
What Charities Are Supported?
Unfortunately, I could not get a complete charity count as there is not a single complete list, but rather a search engine of charities. There are, tens of thousands of charities included, however, as most schools in the country (public and private) each have their own listing. In fact, even the state of Rhode Island returns more than 100 available charities.
Not all charities are available, though, including most of my favorites. When searching for a charity that is not in their database, you will receive the following message:
"The organization you are searching for is not currently listed in our database. You can search again or shop now and email us your electronic sales receipt with the name of your favorite school or IRS-registered 501(c)3 charitable organization. We'll automatically send them a percentage of your purchases."
"Most Popular Causes"
GreaterGodd.com focuses visitors onto what they call their "Most Popular Causes". these are:
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
Make-A-Wish Foundation of America
March of Dimes
Muscular Dystrophy Association - MDA
Save the Children Share Our Strength
Special Olympics
The Humane Society of the United States
The Nature Conservancy
UNICEF
World Wildlife Fund
How Much Goes To Charity?
According to the site's page on becoming a partner:
"For every purchase made in the shopping village, the merchants pay GreaterGood.com a percentage of the sale - an "affiliate fee" of up to 30%. GreaterGood.com covers all the costs of building, maintaining, and serving the sites, and splits the affiliate fees with our cause partners 50/50, providing quarterly payments and aggregated shopping reports. GreaterGood.com will distribute royalties once they reach a minimum of $10. Once the $10 amount is achieved, it will be sent within 30 days following the end of the quarter."
My Investigation
I have read through many of the reviews of GreaterGood.com here at Epinions and while most reviewers are very enthusiastic about the site, few seem to have given much more then a surface appraisal of how it works out for the charities. Even the one other review not recommending the site seems to do so more on gut feeling then any actual research.
Seeing all this praise, I decided to do a little research before writing this Epinion. I e-mailed ten charities selected (essentially) at random from the lists available at GreaterGood.com. Two of these charities were selected from the "Most Popular" list, while the other eight are relatively small organizations.
I am not going to "name names" here as I do not feel it is appropriate. I believe my reputation (as evident by my other charity reviews here) should be enough to convince you that I truly did contact these people. If not, please feel free to duplicate my efforts and contact a few on your own before whole heartedly supporting GreaterGood.com.
I sent the following message to each of the charties:
"Greetings,
I am doing some research on online charities and found your address at GreaterGood.com I would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes and answer the following questions.
Thank you in advance for your time.
Peace,
Aahz
GreaterGood.com Questionnaire
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1.How long have you been associated with GreaterGood.com?
2.Do you feel your association with GreaterGood.com has been beneficial?
3.Have you been paid promptly and regularly?
4.Approximately how much have you received from GreaterGood.com?
5.Do you have any complaints about GreaterGood.com?
6.Do you benefit from any other web-based charity sites?
7.Is there anything else you would like to add?"
(I will be doing similar investigations into other charity sites in the coming months, so if you have any recommendations on modifying this questionnaire, please contact me via email.)
Survey Results
I received responses from 5 of the 10 charities I contacted, including one of the two from GreaterGood's "Most Popular" list.
The first was from a small charity devoted to wolves. They were very happy with GreaterGood.com and had no complaints whatsoever. They closed their response with the following line:
"Your questionaire without explanation is actually quite rude."
None of the three other 'small' charities that responded were happy with GreaterGood.com.
They had been associated with GreaterGood.com for an average of 10 months and had received an average of $27.43 as a result of their relationship. Only one of them received any benefits from other chairty sites.
Comments included:
"We've been paid once last year, although we know that members and friends have shopped there."
and
"We'd like timely information on our shoppers and payment."
The "Most Popular" site that responded had been with GreaterGood.com since June 2000 and had been paid promptly and regularly. They have received approximately $2,300 dollars from GreaterGood.com and do not work with any other online site, saying:
"We are very diligent about ensuring that our name and marks are not used by other web sites. We prefer for all online fund-raising to come through [our] global Web site. GreaterGood is the only such program with which we are involved and it will remain that way for the forseeable future."
Seems positive so far. However, the following comments were also included:
"The funding that has been returned to our chapters through this program has not been proportionate to the publicity investment that we have made. We have given
GreaterGood a prominent place on our Web site and in our newsletters. This kind of high-profile exposure is something that we don't even consider for donors who give 25 times the amount that GreaterGood has given us. We have changed our philosophy from viewing GreaterGood as a fund-raising vehicle to viewing it as a mechanism for our donors to interact with us."
My Conclusions
GreaterGood.com is a wonderful business model, but I do not see it as beneficial to most charities. Any non-profit organization could easily build a site of their own with the same affiliate links available at GreaterGood.com and keep 100% of the revenue.
If you regularly shop online thru GreaterGood.com I would recommend you add the same affiliate links to your personal web site and sign over each check you receive to the charity of your choice. Not only would the charities receive more of your donation, but you would be assured they received it and you as opposed to the stockholders of GreaterGood.com will receive the tax deduction.
I hope you have found this article useful in determining whether or not to support GreaterGood.com. I am in the process of working my way through all of the charity sites listed here at Epinions. Your thoughts are welcome via either email or as comments to this message.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Aahz
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Member: Aahz
Location: ...Behind The Curtain
Reviews written: 60
Trusted by: 31 members
About Me:
Aahz has returned to Epinions after a short 7 year hiatus. Why? We'll see together...
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