You've Got Money

The Charity Blogger points to a new, free email service that gives back to nonprofits.  Ippimail promises to donate 45% of the profits it makes from selling advertising to charities chosen by its users.

Ippimail requires users to fill out a detailed questionaire.  This should make advertisors happy.  But the challenge is building enough critical mass to attract advertisors and nonprofits.  Let's face it, unless you're making some real money from it, nonprofits won't push supporters to use it.  It becomes a vicious cycle.  No one's making money because there aren't enough users; there aren't users because no one's making enough money!

I suspect they're having the same problem over at GoodSearch.  Nice idea, but unless you have a very loyal donor base that will go out of their way to use the service, people either can't be bothered or quickly lose interest.  Then the nonprofit stops pushing it because they're not making any money and...well, reread paragraph two.

So how could this work?  I think Upromise could teach them a thing or two.  Upromise is the Internet site that contributes to your kid's college fund when you shop with certain retailers or buy specific products.  I love it.  I buy things and they let me know which companies gave me a kickback.  What's key is I'm not really going out of my way--to a special site or portal--I'm just buying the things I always buy and getting free money to send my kids to college.  Now that's a great deal.

Technorati tags: cause marketing, goodsearch, ippimail, upromise