Tag: Charity Donations

ARE SMALL ARTICLES THE FINANCIAL LIFELINE FOR CHARITIES?

 

We look at how the subtle growth of paid-for online Content, will be the revenue stream of choice for the charity and giving market. We focus on the SHEKINAH homeless charity in Plymouth and ask; is their model the way forward?

Charities are not backward when it comes to asking you and I for money. Every charity has it’s “please give me” column, it’s “terrible hardship” note, or “aspirational” look what we can do with your £5.00, and the list goes on.

They all sound so desperate and deserving in equal measure.

The problem is that in current times, the ordinary guy and family, have less disposable money to make the sort of contributions they used to do. And what is worse there is the hesitation of “what am I actually getting for my money. Feel-good factor is all very well but what about feeing your kids?

For many families, there are today’s choices, when for many, there is no comparison, and no option.

Except that maybe there is.

The growth of online Content has spawned a new payment process that allows Charities (and others), to charge nominal sums, in an instant, to read some of their published material. Instead of ticking the box to give a sum of money, the reader ticks the box to read something that stimulates him, that helps him understand better the charity involved – and in return, his small contribution, goes towards making a difference.

The SHEKINAH charity (shekinah.co.uk) uses the EXODOX (exodox.link) platform in Stockholm, to be the payment gateway. And it works like this.

SHEKINAH create a suitable article – which they publish either on their own site or on a third party News site, They install an EXODOX plugin – and create their unique payment account. They link their article to their payment account. And when you or I visit the Charity or News site, we click on the article, and pay usually £1.00 or so, to access the Content.

It is simple and immediate and you wonder why nobody had thought of this before. Maybe we were all waiting for “tap and go” and familiarity of card based transactions for pretty much not a lot.

But lots of “not a lot” mount up to “quite a lot”, thanks for asking.

The latest SHEKINAH article can be accessed at: https://www.thelibraries.co.uk/financial/society-does-not-depend-on-government-society-depends-on-society/

————-

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME. OH NO IT DOESN’T. IT BEGINS WITH THE CHARITY COMPANIES.

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME. NO IT DOESN’T. IT BEGINS WITH THE CHARITY COMPANIES.

We look at important new ways for Charities to raise money, increase revenues, and ask – why are they so reluctant to do something new?

————-

The conversation goes something like this. “I’m a Charity. And I have no money. But  I would like to save the world/Africa/the NHS… So – I would like to have some of YOUR money, because you are obviously richer than I, and you don’t need all of yours”.

This same approach also applies to related businesses, such as Theatres, the Arts, anywhere that there are good and valiant people  that are desperate for our immediate help. And it is unfair. The classic donation based revenue structure for charities is centred  around a guilt trip. Heavens, we must do something.  The home page of every Charity, large and small, is honed in like cruise missile, to get us to sign up. 

And we feel good about this. We have done our duty. People say that the “giving” of  presents at Christmas time, is better than the actual “receiving”.  Actually, I’m not too sure about that one, but you get the point.

And yes, some Charities try to offer a bribe – give us your money, and you get some vouchers for this or that, at whatever retail store or coffee place near you. I’ll drink to that.

And it is a pity because it misses the point. Firstly that the key asset that people are indeed interested in, is the depth of knowledge that you yourself have as a charity of many years standing, and that you currently either don’t talk much about or actually give away for free! And second – that people who are prepared to support you, will spend many times over their initial subscriptions etc each month, to buy access to your Content.

In short – your deeper knowledge as a Charity, about human nature, life’s experience, solutions and philosophies, has a commercial value. What is more, the technology exists to make that purchasing decision, simple, immediate.

Welcome to The Futureshapers.  What started out just a few years ago as a publishing platform for deeper business articles, by providing an instant payment mechanism for micro-payment amounts – a few pence here – a quid there – is rapidly becoming the de facto choice not only for businessmen, but for ordinary people  like you and I, to support the charities we wish to help.

There is no big monthly commitment. You just look at the material on the Charity website of your choice, click on the article, and that’s it. 

In theory this is a no-brainer, and you would have thought that there would be a queue of arts and good organisations just wanting to get involved.

Not so.  The stigma still exists that somehow, the fragrance of commercialisation gets in the way of the higher things that TFS and the public,  are very willing and indeed open to trying to do.  More so when you consider that the monthly readership of TFS Articles, is well into six figures, it makes commercial sense for any Charity to reshape their online strategy.

It is already clear, from, the increasing amount of subscription based Content available to us all online, that pay-per-read, is becoming the method of choice, for each of us to access the information we truly value.

If we have already proven to ourselves at last, that we value the good things that Charities are doing, then surely it is not too much to ask that the Charities themselves start to accommodate us – and in doing so, better accommodate the very people and projects they are trying to serve.

 

The Futureshapers can be contacted at; www.thefutureshapers.com