Utility comparison Web site offers affinity income for charities
Howard Lake | 20 March 2003 | News
Switchandgive.com enables customers to compare prices from all the UK’s gas and electricity suppliers and switch utility suppliers. Each time a customer switches utility suppliers, charities receive a commission of up to £40.
Switchandgive.com has been created by Fundraising Innovations Ltd, and is the “first of a series of innovative fundraising e-products aimed at charities” according to the company.
Mark Todd co-founder and director of Fundraising Innovations Ltd commented: “Ten per cent of UK households (circa 2.6m) are switching suppliers each year. Given that there are generally two people to a household, 5% of a charity’s supporter base will switch gas and electricity supplier each year. A charity with 100,000 supporters could raise up to £180,000 each year, if this 5% of their supporter base switched through switchandgive.com.”
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The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Christian Aid, The Refugee Council, Action for South Africa (ACTSA) and the National Autistic Society are amongst the first charities to use switchandgive. Each has its own branded version of the Web site (eg www.switchandgive.com/nspcc) and is marketing the service through its supporter base, staff and corporate partnerships.
The Web site was developed by BouncingFish, and included a management information tool to help Fundraising Innovations track the success of the charity partners’ marketing channels in order to maximise their revenue potential.
Jay Manek, co-founder and director of Fundraising Innovations Ltd explained the company’s approach. “Fundraising Innovations was created to develop longterm partnerships with charities to help them realise the full fundraising potential offered by the Internet and new technologies. So far, much has been talked about in the charity sector, but little revenue has actually been realised. Fundraising Innovations aims to change this.”
Charities will receive up to £40 for dual fuel (gas and electricity) switches, depending on the supplier and tariff chosen. For each fuel switched (i.e. gas or electricity), Fundraising Innovations keeps £5, and donates the rest to charity. This, says the company, usually amounts to about 70-80% of the commission received from new suppliers. To date, the average donation to charity has been £36 per user that has switched to a new supplier.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.