New dog owner community launches online with charity drive
Howard Lake | 1 March 2012 | News
A brand new website has launched in the UK, aimed at dog owners looking to save money on essential purchases such as dog food, treats, beds, leads and much more; with an innovative comparison function that enables visitors to not only find the best price, but also donate to charity just by buying items through the site.
www.mydogworld.co.uk has launched in the UK with an aim to become the one stop shop for dog owners; providing a price comparison function which allows users to both save money and donate a percentage of their purchase to charity, purely by using the website.
Visitors to the website can view and compare prices across hundreds of dog-related products, find discount codes and special offers and also, by simply using the price comparison function and purchasing through the site, a percentage of the user’s order value is donated by My Dog World to various dog related charities and organisations.
Working in such a way, these donations cost the customer no more extra cash than they would have spent on their items anyway, as it is My Dog World that releases the money to the chosen charities. In terms of targets for how much My Dog World is aiming to raise for its partner charities, the site hopes to achieve enough sales to give £250,000 in 2012.
With more than 8 million dog owners in the UK, the site owners see that just a small percentage of these would be required to get behind the idea for them to achieve the target donation. The price comparison function on the site can often bring up the same item with a £10 difference in cost from different retailers, so the customer always benefits.
As well as helping users save money and enabling them to easily donate money to charity, My Dog World provides users with information on re-homing and rescue dogs and details on dog training, behaviour and much more; thanks to a partnership with leading dog trainer and behaviourist expert Gwen Bailey.
The site will educate dog owners further, providing them with all the products, information and advice they could need to give their dog a happy home. Users can also upload images of their pet dogs and share stories of their pets with other users.
Stuart Reed, founder of mydogworld.co.uk, spoke about the charity donation aspect of the website;
“It has recently been brought to my attention that around 20 dogs are put to sleep in the UK every day, often through no fault of their own and simply because animal shelters have not been successful in re-homing them. This saddens me no end and I know many people are giving up their pets because they can no longer afford to keep them. Team this with the fact charity donations from the general public are declining and there is a real problem.
“We wanted to think of a way that we could give money to dog related charities and dog related good causes without having to ask site visitors for more money than they would spend on the purchase of their items. We therefore decided we would give a percentage of each purchase to charity, because then everyone wins. The charities benefit and customers can feel good about buying through My Dog World, because they know they are getting the best price for goods and making a difference to dog welfare.”
www.mydogworld.co.uk
ENDS
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.