Causecast.com is a philanthropic site that brings a number of major figures in politics and entertainment together to pitch and bring attention to 10 non-profit companies a month.
The system lets you view information about the non-profit including videos and event listings. You can then donate to different causes and create your own personal profile describing your favorite non-profits.
They also have a widget that can appear on any website which describes your current favorite cause.
Each cause gets it’s own major figure. For example, Ashton Kutcher currently supports Habitat for Humanity with Target. Causecast gets a small amount of cash for creating these partnerships and the rest goes to the cause in question.
The panel was impressed by the reach and celebrity interaction of the site and the hope is that Causecast can become a go-to service for future micro- and macro-philanthropists.
I quite didn’t understand the business model and nobody asked in the panel. Can somebody explain?
They apparently take some money from the donations run through the site
Good work Sloane – looking good! Congrats on CauseCast!
Hi John,
Just to clarify, with Causecast donations are 100% tax-deductible and Causecast does not take a fee. We empower people to give what they can and feel good knowing that they are directly affecting change.
We want to make it easy for people to get involved with Causes and we provide the one stop shop to make this happen.
Thanks!
In cause,
Levi
It’s a brilliant and an exciting concept! Causes everywhere will thank you..
Just to clarify the model -
We take nothing from non-profits or leaders or individuals – no transaction fees go to us. What we do is charge major brands for ’cause-marketing’. They can sponsor campaigns to raise money or awareness for a particular cause. We will charge them for the marketing. We can also use the brand relationship to generate more donations by encouraging the companies to do things like match donations.
Basically, they can sponsor the site, sponsor videos, or sponsor the widget. This allows us to pay for the infrastructure, so we don’t have to charge the organizations anything.
We take no transaction fees.
I’ve just created a donation website that lets anybody organizations or individuals create a Request and ask for donations. My site doesn’t take anything either. The only people that take money are the payment gateway providers, in this case there is only one at this stage – Paypal. Please come visit my site and tell me what you think (http://www,requestfunds.com). Oh and I think my site will become the leading authority in donation services
Yeah Rob, get your own coverage please.
Besides the fact that your web site has no credibility, no contract information, no tax deduction or company registration and your domain is registered at discount domains with privacy guard.
Jesus.. yes you will be leading authority but not in donation services.
fair enough Aleksy …
Is Causecast a non-profit or for-profit organization?
Seed funded, so am guessing for-profit!
This kind of site has been around for a while. In France, http://www.jeveuxaider.org has been up for the last 5 years. Brilliant idea but nothing new, nore the business model.
Do they have J-Lo?
Willy, Causecast is both a for-profit and a not-for-profit. They’d have to explain how that works.
And btw, it’s Causecast.org, not Causecast.com.
As I understand it there is a non-profit that handles all donation pass-through and a for-profit that runs the business.
Ryan – congrats on the launch – the site looks great and the model is brilliant. People always feel a little uneasy when facilitators skim money from the donations. Nobody feels bad when you get it from corporate sponsors that are trying to associate themselves with good causes. Brilliant!
Hi Ryan, yes, looks good – congratulations. We have built something similar in http://www.ammado.com. AS you said – the more people do it the better. WE have +2000 nonprofits on the site today and they are very thankful indeed. On the other hand – myspace, bebo etc. offer nonprofit services as well and for the nonprofits it’s a question of how to allocate resources (in this case time). ammado has a similar bizdev model to yours but with corporate partners you will always have problems in promoting their names on other social networks – facebook for example wouldn’t allow it. Check out social vibes as well.
I’m very confused. Isn’t this a rip off of sites like SocialVibe that are killing it in this area? I just don’t see the value in Causecast.org.
Ok I just looked again at the two, and causecast even ripped off SocialVibes logo and some other features. lol.
SocialVibe is pasting advertizing / logos on social profiles.
CauseCast seems similar to Facebook causes or change.org etc.
Hi All
Sounds like lots of people are doing great work.
1.
Here are lots of reasons why any company (yes the one you work in;) should donate a high percentage and ideally 100% to innovative charities http://www.traidmark.org as it increases your companies goodwill which is key in the digital age. Please comment on this point on the Traidmark.org website so others can find it.
You create profit and then use that to fund the development of innovation to solve humanities problems rather than having it wasted on millionaires selfish lifestyle choices.
2.
One problem with the web is that things get duplicated so if there are more than one org doing the same thing it would be great if your could collaborate to reduce wasteful duplication.
Ed
http://www.whymandesign.com