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It's a dog's life, but not for e-commerce

Howard Lake | 4 April 2006 | Blogs

When I first read in the Independent (March 27th) that dog tags are to be the new wristbands of charity fundraising, I pegged a little thought. It was the “this will come back to me” kind of thought.
Ding. An email dropped in to my inbox this morning and it was for a cause called The Name Campaign (US-based) – www.namecampaign.org. It helps Ugandan children who have been kidnapped by the rebel army. It’s using dog tags to raise its profile – each bears the name of a real abducted child and his or her age – and it’s selling them online.
Apparently Samaritans were the first to launch this in the UK, and although their ‘product page’ was difficult to find on their site (it’s under their 24/7 campaign) a direct web search brought it up:  http://www.samaritans.org/support/247/tags.shtm
So I looked around some more and found another UK example in Reprieve  – they’re not directly selling online but they are using their website to promote their tags – http://www.reprieve.org.uk/getinvolved_products.htm
But finally it was back to the US. I found the utlimate in e-commerce and affinity fundraising. Pedigree USA has a Dog Adoption Drive. You can save up vouchers from bags of dog food and send off for your dog tags. Or you can bid for a series of one-of-a-kind dog tags on eBay. Pedigree has teamed up with well-known celebrities to get them to create designer-wear dog tags in the name of the American Human Association – available by auction for a limited time (now expired – and as yet no sign of the results).
Now it occurs to me I could / should (?) bang home some points about the transparency, ethics, cause-worthiness or accountability of such sales. After all, I tried and couldn’t find out how much of the proceeds from each dog tag reaches the cause, whether they were manufactured ethically, whether consumers actually knew or learned anything about the cause (or just cared that they were a new cool fashion statement), whether there is any evidence they produce new supporters / donors or indeed a reasonably justified fundraising income…
But I won’t. Here’s where that little thought lodged in my head is taking me.
Is it time for charity e-commerce to come into its own? It certainly seems that in the US the idea of charity trading and merchandising has taken off far more than here in the UK. The direct e-commerce angle is being creatively exploited either by focusing on own brands, goods difficult to find in stores, celebrity limited editions, and other special fundraising affiliations between charities and companies. Much of what you can do online as a consumer you can probably find a way to do for charity (if only a single cause) in the States, but it’s certainly not widespread there and far from it here.
Initiatives like eBay’s GivingWorks, and our very own eBay for Charity here, could start to make a consumer consciousness of charity more mainstream, but changes like that usually take a decade or more as a single initiative. I’m thinking more about affinity online shopping, redeeming loyalty points online for charity (Nectar / Boots / any and all), cashback schemes and other online buying incentives.
Isn’t it time charities got a share of consumers buying habits and consumers got a chance to choose who benefits from what they do?

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