December 17, 1998 | Read Time: 1 minute
Charities may soon benefit from the billions of dollars consumers spend making purchases on line. Three new companies — 4charity.com, Millennium Projects On Line, and Shop2Give — have each introduced Web sites in recent months that allow users to shop on line and direct a portion of the price of their purchases to charity.
The three sites work in a similar way: Shoppers who visit the site choose a non-profit organization they want to support, and then make a purchase through one of the retailers linked to the site. Part of the sales commission the retailer might normally pay to a site that sends shoppers its way then goes to the designated charity.
4charity.com, which has 27 affiliated retailers, collects the commission, keeps up to 2 per cent, and sends the rest to charity. The company’s founder says that about $1,000 went to charities in the site’s first month, and that 4charity.com, which is seeking non-profit status, did not keep any of the fees.
At CharityMall.com, which is run by Millennium Projects On Line, the 22 affiliated retailers send the commissions directly to the charities. To make money, the company sells advertisement space on its site.
Shop2Give has varying arrangements with the 25 on-line stores it works with: Some pay the company a flat fee, and some give the company a specified percentage of the sale over and above the percentage designated for charity.
Officials at CharityMall and Shop2Give said that it was too early to tell how much had so far been spent through their sites or collected for charity.
To get there: http://www.charitymall.com, http://www.4charity.com, http://www.Shop2Give.com.
