New build-your-own charity Web shop service launched
Howard Lake | 6 January 2004 | News
Positive Change have launched a new facility to enable voluntary groups and charities the opportunity to raise money through their own Web shop.
The system pulls together a range of affiliate programmes from merchants who are prepared to pay Web site owners a fee for each sale or registration they can generate. Positive Change will create and manage a shop customised to the charity which then promotes it to its members and supporters: by shopping online via the site they will earn income for the charity.
Positive Change offers to create the site for free, but makes its money by taking a small percentage of the commission each charity generates from the participating merchants. In other words, Positive Change only earns an income if the charity generates an income. However, it earns a second tier commission, so this does not reduce the amount that the charity receives from the merchant.
Advertisement
Of course charities could approach these merchants direct, but Positive Change hopes its ready-made shop offer will persuade them not to.
Affiliate marketing-based charity Web shops have been around since 1997, with Eyegive (subsequently iGive.com) in the USA being one of the first. Many others followed, and there are still some in the UK, but it is a difficult online fundraising model to make a success with. Positive Change’s approach is to emphasise the ethical nature of its business and of those merchants it partners with. Indeed, if you follow the link from their example Web shop you reach their site called UK Ethical Affiliates. Ultimately the model relies on the charity promoting the Web shop to its supporters both regularly and in a sustained manner.
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.