Donating to Charity in Exchange for Email Subscribers

January 5, 2009 By 6 Comments

50centsYesterday I was contacted by Lee Dryburgh, organizer of the eComms Conference.  eComms is a conference about emerging communications focusing on the telecom industry.  Lee told me that he was running a social media experiment of donating $0.50 to Shelter Network, a Bay Area-based charitable organization, for every email subscriber he received for the eComms mailing list.

He explains on a post about this experiment that he wanted to grow his email subscriber list.  Instead of purchasing a list and then trying to get opt-in subscribers from that list, Lee thought he would try to raise money for a charitable organization at the same time.  He has tried enlisting the help of people he calls “social media gurus” to help him spread the word.  The sign-up page states that are approximately 4 updates per month so if you can deal with that, then it’s worth it to sign up and let Lee contribute to Shelter Network on your behalf.  Never heard of Shelter Network?  Check out this video that I found (I can’t embed the video as the feature has been disabled).

I think this is an interesting model of increasing your email subscriber list.  Instead of paying for a list or growing it organically which can take a long time, offer to donate to a charitable organization in exchange for every subscriber you get.

I think there are definitely some flaws to this model though.  When you’re growing your list you want people to sign up who are interested in receiving the updates that you send.  The sheer number of subscribers doesn’t help if you can’t leverage that group to do more in the future.  Even if you aren’t trying to leverage your subscribers, it does no good if they sign up then immediately unsubscribe or mark the email as junk/spam.

But, I do appreciate what Lee is trying to do and think it is a great idea.  I am fascinated at these micro-funding concepts and will be exploring them more throughout 2009.

What are your thoughts on this model of growing your subscriber list?  If you think it’s interesting and you want to do a little bit of good for free, head over the to the sign-up page.

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Photo by: korafotomorgana

Filed Under: Charity, Microfunding Tagged With: , ,
  • http://dannybrown.me Danny Brown

    I agree, it does seem an interesting way to grow a subscriber list and do good at the same time. However, as you mention, there are a couple if areas to look at:

    1. You mentioned about the list itself and the subscribers on it. This is important to recognize. While there might be the initial flurry of new subscribers, how many of these will stay when the content comes out? That’s not to say the content is poor, far from it – but if it’s not relevant to them, then people will start unsubscribing, leaving Lee in a similar position to the one he was in previously (albeit a financially poorer one).

    2. There’s also the “proof factor”. Before I go on, I do want to make it clear that I’m not doubting Lee’s integrity at all. However, there will always be other less scrupulous individuals or companies that look at this model and say, “Hmm, that might work and who’s to say how many subscribers we’ve received, we’ll donate what we want.” Say you get 1,000 new subscribers – unless there’s full transparency, who’s to know any different if you say you only got 100 subscribers and make the equivalent donation?

    I’m with you in that it’s a great concept, but perhaps it may just need some fine-tuning?

    Danny Brown’s last blog post..New Year, New Look But Same Old Me

  • http://dannybrown.me Danny Brown

    I agree, it does seem an interesting way to grow a subscriber list and do good at the same time. However, as you mention, there are a couple if areas to look at:

    1. You mentioned about the list itself and the subscribers on it. This is important to recognize. While there might be the initial flurry of new subscribers, how many of these will stay when the content comes out? That’s not to say the content is poor, far from it – but if it’s not relevant to them, then people will start unsubscribing, leaving Lee in a similar position to the one he was in previously (albeit a financially poorer one).

    2. There’s also the “proof factor”. Before I go on, I do want to make it clear that I’m not doubting Lee’s integrity at all. However, there will always be other less scrupulous individuals or companies that look at this model and say, “Hmm, that might work and who’s to say how many subscribers we’ve received, we’ll donate what we want.” Say you get 1,000 new subscribers – unless there’s full transparency, who’s to know any different if you say you only got 100 subscribers and make the equivalent donation?

    I’m with you in that it’s a great concept, but perhaps it may just need some fine-tuning?

    Danny Brown’s last blog post..New Year, New Look But Same Old Me

  • http://leanstartups.com Apolinaras “Apollo” Sinkevicius

    For one, I would not subscribe to that kind of list. The level of gimmicky-ness of the promo is just too high.
    If I am not genuinely interested in the information that will be provided to me, than it is purely a waste of resources.

    If someone really wants to donate X amount to charity, why use gimmicks?

    In December I wrote an article about building in philanthropy into startups with some best practices of how to accomplish it.
    http://www.leanstartups.com/2008/12/place-of-philanthropy-in-startup-dna.html

    At the end of the day, I don’t think that mentioned method of gaining subscribers is sustainable.

    Just my humble 2 cents.

    Apolinaras “Apollo” Sinkevicius’s last blog post..Ideas for startups to implement in order to avoid laying off (good) people

  • http://www.othersidegroup.com Kate Brodock

    Justin –

    You’re probably not looking for this type of response, but I think it’s applicable because it is something that companies have to think about when the chose to be socially responsible.

    With the technicalities that Danny and you mentioned aside, I think the bigger picture gets at notion of motives. Some people have a really hard time accepting something that is meant to be altruistic, but is also a source of benefit for the do-gooder (like donating to a cause and getting good press or a thumbs up on their marketing campaign).

    I’m a firm believer in good + good = great. If you’re doing charity work, and you tie it to gaining blog subscribers, I think that’s fine (I’d EVEN say that it’s fine even if growing blog subscribers was the goal and the charity part was the decided upon mechanism (secondary motive), because the alternatives you could have chosen as a mechanism to achieve goal could have been a lot less respectable).

    We wanted to do a holiday drive for our company (http://tinyurl.com/57wcpe) and I’ll tell you we sure did think about the click-throughs and link love that we’d get when we chose how to set it up. Do I love what I’m donating to and why I’m doing? Yes, I would have done it without telling anyone anyway. Do I love the SEO we get from it? Sure do.

    Kate

  • http://www.othersidegroup.com Kate Brodock

    Justin –

    You’re probably not looking for this type of response, but I think it’s applicable because it is something that companies have to think about when the chose to be socially responsible.

    With the technicalities that Danny and you mentioned aside, I think the bigger picture gets at notion of motives. Some people have a really hard time accepting something that is meant to be altruistic, but is also a source of benefit for the do-gooder (like donating to a cause and getting good press or a thumbs up on their marketing campaign).

    I’m a firm believer in good + good = great. If you’re doing charity work, and you tie it to gaining blog subscribers, I think that’s fine (I’d EVEN say that it’s fine even if growing blog subscribers was the goal and the charity part was the decided upon mechanism (secondary motive), because the alternatives you could have chosen as a mechanism to achieve goal could have been a lot less respectable).

    We wanted to do a holiday drive for our company (http://tinyurl.com/57wcpe) and I’ll tell you we sure did think about the click-throughs and link love that we’d get when we chose how to set it up. Do I love what I’m donating to and why I’m doing? Yes, I would have done it without telling anyone anyway. Do I love the SEO we get from it? Sure do.

    Kate

  • http://leanstartups.com Apolinaras "Apollo" Sinkeviciu

    For one, I would not subscribe to that kind of list. The level of gimmicky-ness of the promo is just too high.
    If I am not genuinely interested in the information that will be provided to me, than it is purely a waste of resources.

    If someone really wants to donate X amount to charity, why use gimmicks?

    In December I wrote an article about building in philanthropy into startups with some best practices of how to accomplish it.
    http://www.leanstartups.com/2008/12/place-of-philanthropy-in-startup-dna.html

    At the end of the day, I don't think that mentioned method of gaining subscribers is sustainable.

    Just my humble 2 cents.

    <abbr>Apolinaras “Apollo” Sinkevicius’s last blog post..Ideas for startups to implement in order to avoid laying off (good) people</abbr>