# The human right thing to do

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/1998/08/02/human-right-thing-do/
- Published: 1998-08-02T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

[Amnesty International UK](http://www.amnesty.org.uk) is now offering an Internet
affinity scheme to raise funds from people who sign up for an Internet account. 
Amnesty has teamed up with @ffinity access, one of a range of affinity partners 
called “Partners for Change.” Subscribers pay £14.95 per month (including VAT) for
an account with UUNET Pipex Dial, and “a proportion of this fee will go directly
to Amnesty International.” [The subscription fee was subsequently reduced to £11.66
a month, including VAT, by March 1999].

Amnesty receives £15 for every new subscriber. In practice this is a £3 donation
on opening an account, plus £1 per month thereafter. Amnesty will also receive an
additional 5% (or £19) if subscribers renew their account after the first 12 months.
Amnesty’s promotional material suggests that, “if only 5% of our supporters were
to sign up for Internet access, we would receive £105,000.” This, they estimate,
could be worth £662,130 over three years (based on a current membership of approximately
140,000 and a 10 per cent attrition rate). Amnesty also publishes the figure for
a 15% subscription response: such a success would be worth £315,000 in the first
year and £1,986,390 over three years.

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This affinity project follows in the footsteps of similar projects set up last year,
such as Christian Aid’s “SurfAid” and Charities Aid Foundation’s Charity Netaccess.
The first Internet charity affinity projects in the UK were established in the early
1990s by Internet Service Providers [Poptel](http://www.poptel.net) and Direct Connection[
acquired by [Netscalibur](http://www.netscalibur.co.uk) in July 2000].