When much of the Web's money-making potential is exploited by merchants obsessed with becoming millionaires, it's a refreshing change to see the medium used by non-profit organisations, who focus on lining the stomachs of the impoverished many, rather than the pockets of the clued-in few.
Last week, Concern followed the trail-blazing Hunger Site (www.thehungersite.com) and launched a site which allows users to help feed the world by simply visiting The Good Spider (www.thegoodspider.com) for just one second each day.
Each visit to the site will generate enough money to purchase 162 grams of grain - enough to provide a meal for one person. The revenue donations come from business advertising. Concern hopes that The Good Spider will raise up to £250,000 per annum for its work overseas.
The site does not rely solely on its user's good-nature to draw them in to the good spider's web, however; it also offers them easy access to the main search engines including Alta Vista and Yahoo!, an idea that Barry McDonagh, the man behind the project, hopes will lead to more people making the site their home page. "If we are going to ask people to make our site their home page then we have to offer them something worthwhile," he said.
He paid tribute to the businesses that had helped get the project off the ground and said he was "very encouraged" by the response of corporate advertisers to date. Some potential sponsors had difficulty understanding the concept, however, believing they were being approached to make charitable contributions rather than invest in a marketing strategy. Banner ad "click-through rates" on almost all websites are less than one per cent, but on charitable sites are a creditable three per cent.
It is planned that the site will register in the UK within three months and target advertisers there, which McDonagh hopes will increase traffic to the site dramatically. "This is the first time this has happened in Europe. I am amazed it hasn't happened here before. I think that the concept will mushroom but hopefully we will be able to set the standard in Europe."
The Good Spider's model, the Hunger Site, has set the global standard since its launch a year ago. At no cost to themselves, visitors to the Hunger Site can make one free donation every day. So far over 170,000 cups of food have been made from people in Ireland who have clicked on the "Donate Free Food" button displayed prominently on the Hunger Site's homepage.
The number of donations made from around the world varies on any given day, but since the initiative was established a year ago it has been receiving between 150,000 and 300,000 page impressions each day, a number which currently translates into over 200 tons of free food donated weekly to the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP), the world's largest international food aid organisation.
Last year, UNWFP delivered nearly three million tons of food aid to 89 million people around the world, most of it to people fleeing ethnic conflict or to the millions suffering from chronic malnutrition. For its part, the Hunger Site has provided more than 1.8 million meals to Ethiopian school children. The UNWFP greatly appreciates the efforts of those who regularly donate food through the Hunger Site, according to spokesman, Frank Mwanza. Describing it as "a unique way of raising money", he acknowledged the 70 million people in over 180 countries who have visited the site in the past 12 months.
John Breen, the software programmer from Indiana who founded the site, initially wanted to support Third World education because he felt that in the long-term it was the most effective way of reducing hunger. Speaking a few weeks after the site launch, he said: "A big problem with educating some children is that they are so malnourished they can't concentrate." With hunger killing 24,000 around the world each day, Breen decided that hunger relief would have to take priority. While most of the UNWFP's resources are used to alleviate the immediate impact of natural or man-made disasters, the relief agency also oversees long-term development projects such as the Schools Feeding Programme, which encourages impoverished parents to educate their children by providing families with food on condition that the younger members attend regular classes.
Breen requested that the money collected from advertisers on the site be used to fund the WFP School Feeding Programme. According to Catherine Bertini, executive director of the UNWFP, the $3 million received from Hunger Site sponsors is being used to buy school lunches for the programme.
It is also being used to help communities hit by drought and floods to prepare better for emergencies. "The Hunger Site's contribution has been extraordinary. Thanks to the many people who visit the site daily, not only has it generated much needed funds for our work; it has also created a great deal of awareness of hunger and its consequences," she said.
The unique "click-to-donate" model for Web-based marketing has become an Internet success story. From a small and creative web-based cottage industry, John Breen's charity campaign has developed into a multi-million-dollar franchise now operated by the US charity GreaterGood.com.
Mr Steve Ulene, vice-president of Strategic Alliances for GreaterGood, describes the phenomenon as "the halo effect". The reason for the high clickthrough rates on ads is that the site overcomes one of the major hurdles of Web advertising: getting a user to care enough about an ad to actually click on it.
GreaterGood.com, is now one of the world's most popular websites, recently ranking in the top 200 most-visited properties on the Internet. As leaders in the emerging Internet "giving and shopping" market, GreaterGood has recently introduced a shopping village to the Hunger Site.
"Anchor tenants" in the village include Amazon, Dell and Gap among many others. If you buy from these online shops while in the shopping village, up to 15 per cent of the price automatically goes to support the charity of your choice - at no cost to you. When you buy your everyday essentials you can feel a little better knowing you are also helping provide someone else with their basic needs.
Celebrating its first anniversary this month, the Hunger Site still depends on individuals taking the trouble to return to the site regularly. Its ongoing success demonstrates the Internet's potential for good, but more importantly it has empowered the individuals who surf it.
If more people bookmarked the site and took a couple of seconds to click "the button" once a day, every day, shrewd advertisers would be sure to follow.
This and other articles on this page are on The Irish Times website at: www.ireland.com
See also: www.hungersite.com and www.thegoodspider.com