$10+ Billion Dollar Industry And Few Search Companies Giving Back To Charities
As you can tell by the headline of the bog post, I am a little dumbfounded by the lack of participation of high tech companies who have shaped what the Internet is today. The main point of this article is to not talk about Companies giving very generous yearly $$ donations, it's about providing their services for Free or at a discount to help with the all important "day to day" operations so they can efficiently and affordably organize their funds, increase volunteers and improve the quantity of donations from both individuals and corporations.
Single Donations are good. Helping Charities grow their online business online by offering free or discounted advertising and/or services are better.
After doing a little research, I have found two highly respectable companies who have created separate foundations and completely dedicated their resources and donated their profits to helping Nonprofits advertise, fund raise, spread advocacy, and increase participation Online. Those two companies are Google Grants (also Google Checkout For Non Profits) and the SalesForce.com Foundation's "The Power Of Us".
However, my $10 billion dollar question with regard to Search Marketing companies is why aren't more of them participating. At the very least, provide a discount.
Where is Yahoo?
Why can't they provide a similar program to Google Grants where they provide $10k/month in Free PPC Advertising. They could use the PR and increase their market share by giving back a little. I also see this as a CPC Inflation strategy that is putting a major hurting on Google advertisers. For more information on Google Putting a Hurting on PPC Advertisers, click here.
Where is MSN?
We all know that Bill Gates has been very philanthropic with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, however, MSN is missing out on the opportunity to help charities online to promote their causes. You would think that with the slumping MSN AdCenter, they could at the least offer FREE PPC advertising to those Nonprofits. This is a very minimal investment and frankly, will only help the organization to acquire more attention to their lacking platform.
Where is Omniture?
I have only seen a few Press Releases about Nonprofits signing up for Omniture, but nowhere can I find a foundation of Free or discounted services for Nonprofit charities. As a newly inductee of Fast Company's World's Top 50 Most Innovative Company, I would think this would be a prerequisite for that award.
Help Me Identify More Companies:
Of course, I am sure there may be other companies who do "give back" that I am not aware of or even the 3 mentioned above may have something, but it is not easily identified on the web.
So, in the spirit of sharing what we all know, please help me put together a list of High Tech and Internet companies who do offer something to charities and nonprofits. The goal is to provide charities with a list of companies who can reach out and lend a hand to their causes.
Once I can tally up a list, I will put up a blog post which will not only mention the companies who donate their services to charities, I will also mention the sources who provided me that information.
Please Note: To help provide the names of companies and what they offer, please either post a comment or email me at greg@worldbenefactor.com.
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SEMcares.com has been around for a number of years but it has never gotten the attention it deserves. From their site, "What is SEMcares.com? SEMcares.com exists as a focal point to rally the "SEM" (Search Engine Marketing) community to help those in need by using our "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization) and "SEM" skills to generate awareness and financial aid to disasters and worthy causes by delivering search engine visitors to deserving organization pages and sites."
Posted by: Aadam | Thursday, May 08, 2008 at 01:47 PM
As someone who is an SEM professional by day and the co-director of a non-profit at night http://oyfp.org/BOS I think about this quite often. We have a Google grant, and use Google Analytics and Blogger. Our website was built by a CMS firm that donated its time, and our member emails go out via e-mail marketing firm Emma http://myemma.com courtesy of a yearly grant from them.
Honestly, I barely have time to pay attention to my AdWords account. The amount of traffic we would get from Yahoo! (never mind MSN) is so minimal that I don't think I would put forth the effort to maintain the account, though I would certainly set up a general branding campaign and just let it run.
I'm not sure why other SEM firms don't offer pro-bono services. I know my firm has on occasion when they were approached by local non-profits. However, they tend to be one-off engagements, not the kind of thorough ongoing engagement that would produce significant results. There's a lack of resources on both sides (the non-profit and the agency). Without commitment and resources from the non-profit, all the donations in the world aren't going to make a difference.
Posted by: Casey @ On Your Feet Project | Thursday, May 08, 2008 at 05:35 PM
My family has started a non profit after lossing my cousin to cancer at 30 years old. Any pointer to send us in the right direction, or where to go for helpful donations would be amazing. If you know of anyone looking to donate please visit our website at the : www.brandierose.org
Thank you so much for your time.bml
Posted by: bml | Thursday, June 05, 2008 at 08:36 PM