The Hunger Site | Who’d Be
The Hunger Site is the original click-to-donate site created in 1999 that gets sponsorship from advertisers in return for delivering users who will see their advertisements. The Hunger site encourages visitors to click a button on the site, once per day, asserting that each unique click results in a donation “equivalent” to 1.1 cups of food. The Hunger Site is not a charity; it is a for-profit corporation which donates the revenue from its advertising banner to selected charities. As of January 2006, these are America’s Second Harvest and Mercy Corps.
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History
The Hunger Site was started by John Breen, a computer programmer from Bloomington, Indiana, in June of 1999. Originally a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, the site became popular rapidly. Faced with increasing costs, Breen sold the site to GreaterGood, “a Seattle-based online shopping mall that gave part of its sales to charity” for an undisclosed amount in February 2000. “In a charitable mood? Just pick, then click.” Tamar Lewin. The New York Times. 11 December 2000. In July 2001, following the dot-com bubble crash, GreaterGood ceased operations after losing $26 million dollars in venture capital. In 2001, CharityUSA.com, LLC, a privately held, for-profit charity based in Seattle) assumed control of the company for $1 million dollars Asia Week: Enterprise[1]. CharityUSA owns and operates various click-to-donate-sites. CharityUSA currently claims that 100% of the website’s sponsor advertising revenue is paid to the aforementioned non-profit partners, however, the company does not publicly disclose the amounts it actually donates or the salaries of its executives. Epinions: Good will, or private gain?[2] (online review of the site) In recent years, the site has moved from banner advertising into the marketing of merchandise, promising that each dollar spent results in donations equivalent to two cups of food.
In early 2007, Tim Kunin, CEO and co-owner of TheHungerSite, announced that the site had, since its inception, donated the equivalent of more than 500 million cups of staple food. The charities supported by The Hunger Site have praised it both for the funds that it raises from sponsors and for the traffic it brings to their own sites.
Mechanics
According to Martin Lewis at The Guardian, The Hunger Site probably doesn’t make money for every click, only on clicks to the sponsor’s sites, and those clicks might be worth 30¢ each. Each click on the “feed the starving” button he estimates as worth 0.7¢, based on average click-through rates. Martin Lewis. “Make it your new year resolution to feed the world for free.” The Guardian. 17 December 2005. The Hunger site gets most of its traffic from the US.
Several websites were operated by GreaterGood in association with the Hunger Site but became defunct once CharityUSA.com bought GreaterGood, including The Child Survival Site and The Kids AIDS Site, both rebranded into The Child Health Site, and The Landmine Site, which raised funds to provide prostheses to people who lost limbs in landmine explosions. At present, CharityUSA operates a number of other benefit-to-charity themed advertising and shopping sites, including The Rainforest Site and The Breast Cancer Site.
Inspired sites
The Hunger Site has also inspired similar sites that are not owned or maintained by the owners of the Greater Good network. Several, the first two of which are now defunct, include:
- The Hungry Site, a parody site that claimed to raise funds to buy steak and gourmet coffee for its owner, who’d been fired from his job
- The Birth Site, a site run by the Catholic Nurturing Network to fund crisis pregnancy centers.
- The Bible Site, which uses a different visual format but was inspired by The Hunger Site’s naming conventions. It funds sending Bibles to Christians in countries where it’s difficult to find copies.
- The Environment Site seems to donate to Surrey Wildlife Trust.
References
- Snopes Urban Legend Entry
External links
- The Hunger Site
- CharityUSA.com
Links
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