Not sure what to make of this

[zebedy]

Has anyone come across this site,

http://www.onlinegaming4charity.com/index.html

Our mission is to donate upto 50% of the commission paid to us by our affiliates after the cashback payment to a Charity specified by you the player ,or to our daily, weekly or monthly Charity. Playing through our website portal WONT increase the cost of playing but will raise much needed money for Charities. We get back the commission you paid for playing.

Once registered you will receive weekly or monthly reports on the amount of money we have donated to your charity on your behalf.

No it wont increase the cost of playing but surely they are just attempting to get more signups to increase there commissions.
Then again should something be knocked that apperently is raising money for charity, If legit ?????????????????????

personally i dont like to see things like this as they will obviosly be earning from it, and i can think of better ways to raise cash for charity
what do you guys think ?


When i checked out the contact phone number it threw out 2 other sites,

http://onlinegaming4charity.com/Contact-us.html

http://www.thecompletekitchencompany.com/contact.html
http://relocatorscostadelsol.com/contact.html

all sites had the following on the footer
Web site designed & hosted by Nick Hubbard © 2009 at Homestead™
so it looks like they are connected

seems odd to me

[chayton]

I took a quick look over the site and find it interesting I couldn't find any of the charities they currently support. (the Nick Hubbard retirement fund...? )

Another thing that's interesting is that they say if you sign up through them, they'll pay you back part of the commission they make from you. I'm not an affiliate so I'm not sure, but isn't that kind of thing a no-no in the affiliate marketing world?

[handkey]

It may really take them more signups to increase there commissions.

But I don't like this way to market.

[Wildfire7]

No business has any business making profit from charitable donations.

As discussed recently on this forum with the Haiti threads, it is the solicitation that is unethical. Also be wary of any company that claims it is donating money to charity but is not a registered charity of any sort.

People will always question the motivation behind it, a casino is in business to make money, it did not set up in business to make more for charities. So using charity could be construed as using it as an advertising ploy to generate income for its core business ie online gaming.

If it must be done then, ideally it should be clearly separated from its core business activities. For instance Casinomeister donates to charity, but it does not say sign up here and we will donate this.

IMO definitely a conflict of interests here.

Mike

[bernynhel]

Raising money for charity is a business. The vast majority of the money raised for charity is done so by people who do it for a living. They are professionals who compete for a finite amount of all the money available for all charities at any given time. The Red Cross, UNICEF, the United Way, Jerry's Kids and the Salvation Army are all professional organizations with huge overhead and payrolls. The Salvation Army's bill just for going to the dump to dispose of the dregs of their daily donations that cannot be sold is over $500,000.00 per day, nationwide. Some non-profit organizations pay multi-million dollar salaries to their chief executive officers. If you wanna make yourself crazy over how much of every charitable dollar donated actually makes it to its intended cause, after expenses, you'll have no trouble. Here's a link to start you off.