I’d like to take a moment to mention a lovely new charity startup called Philanthroper. They’ve taken the “daily deal” idea popularized by Groupon and turned it on its head, so that instead of paying for a coupon, visitors are presented with the option of donating to a different charity every day. To make it even better, they’re only asked to donate one dollar. The idea is, if enough people donate $1 it will add up quickly and allow thousands of ordinary folks to make a difference with very little personal expense.

Not only this, but the folks at Philanthroper don’t even take a cut of the donations for operating costs. They plan to support themselves entirely with advertisement revenue. The only cut goes to mPayy, which takes only $.01 per dollar for their own fee, substantially less than the leading online payment company, PayPal.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see a single advertisement on Philanthroper’s site. I contacted them to find out their rates, and sadly, they’re out of my budget range, but it got me thinking of ways they could improve aspects of their current marketing strategies. After all, better site stats mean more advertisers, and Internet marketing advice is one thing I can afford to give.

I posted the following suggestions on their discussions tab of their Facebook page. Keep in mind these were posted from my individual’s account, not as my business.

1) You need your daily deals newsletter subscription form way higher up the page. People shouldn’t have to look for it! Not only is it way below “the fold” of the page, it’s also below part of the footer – I almost didn’t notice the page kept going, so I almost never saw it! And believe me, if I didn’t get the daily email, I wouldn’t be remembering to check the daily deal. Why not stick it in the sidebar next to the deal?

2) In the emails, your link says “give $1”. I bet you anything that’s scaring people off! Notice how Groupon’s link says “see today’s deal” so people don’t feel like they’re committing to anything until they’ve read more about it. The first couple of times I clicked it, I was hesitant because I wasn’t sure if it would instantly donate or if I could read more before doing so. I bet a simple change in wording would get more people clicking through.

3) Also in the emails: Why so little info? I keep finding myself going “that *might* be worth it, but… meh…” and then it’s a 50/50 chance whether I’ll visit the site to find out. As it is now, half the email is telling me things I already know — and the top half, at that. If I’m subscribed to the email, I already know what you guys do. You don’t need to put your company’s mission statement at the top of the emails above the daily deal. If you added more info about the charity and put your own mission below that, you could make the charity the focus and make the email more valuable, while still reminding us of who you are and why you’re awesome.

They haven’t responded so I wonder if they’ve even noticed the post. Another fan continued the thread with some further suggestions, but has also gone unanswered.

I also reached out to them to do some volunteer work with them on making some promotional badges (this time via my business email), but again, I didn’t hear back. I finally made one myself to add to this site’s sidebar, and decided that unless Philanthroper objects, I should make it available to others.

Disclaimer: These are not officially endorsed by Philanthroper, and all relevant copyrights and trademarks remain with them.

These are hosted on Flickr. I recommend downloading them and hosting them yourself (hotlinking requires you to provide a link back to Flickr to keep with their terms of service). You can use the following code to create the badge, replacing “YOURIMAGESOURCE” with your image source:

I love what Philanthroper is doing, but I’m perplexed by their silence. Perhaps they’re simply too busy to respond? If so, maybe that’s actually a good sign.

Regardless, I wish them all the best of luck. It’s great to see people taking a concept like a daily deal and turning it around to support not one, but many worthy causes. Especially in tough economic times like these, sometimes $1 at a time is all any of us can manage, and yet charities need funding in tough times more than ever. Thank you, Philanthroper, for making that $1 matter.