Will's Web Watch: 'Charity' sites raise user concerns

There is a very good chance that you've seen an email which begins along these lines:

"Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman."

Or maybe: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Animal Rescue Site..."

Or: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Hunger site..."

Or: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Rainforest site..."

Or: "Please tell 10 friends to tell 10 today. The Child Health site..."

OK, so you get the idea. If you're like me you will have been very suspicious of them - perhaps even assuming them to be fraudulent or some kind of malicious attempt to add to the deluge of spam flooding people's inboxes. After all, chain letters are now a largely discredited - and illegal - way of marketing anything, so we tend to be suspicious of anybody using such a tool.

So what's the story? All these sites are run by an organisation called CharityUSA.com.

But despite its name CharityUSA is not a registered charity, it is a for-profit organisation, owned by a company called Homeline Publications, which gives "a percentage" of its profits to charity.

The company - one of a number of 'click-and-give' operators - sells advertising on a 'per click' basis and circulates emails imploring people to visit the sites to drive up the impressions. The email may come from a friend of yours but the uniformity of format should give a good indication of its original source.

To the recipient of such emails there appears no reason not to click. It doesn't cost you a thing and you believe you are doing some good.

And it's worth pointing out that you probably are - but perhaps not as much as you imagine. "A percentage" of the sites revenues do go to charities, as advertisers stump up donations in return for impressions - but "a percentage" of revenues also go towards the company's own profits.

However, the sites do too little in my opinion to make this latter point clear and it's a business model which raises a number of questions. First, the spam-like marketing of the sites is dubious to say the least. Perhaps they court less controversy than those marketing other products via bulk unsolicited email but this still feels like spam.

Second, there is the dichotomy which exists between the sites benefiting charities while also benefiting people who are essentially creating wealth out of nothing other than people's willingness to give.

In essence it's a business model which anybody could adopt and which is wide open for abuse. What's to stop anybody in the business of selling online advertising from promising a percentage of ad revenues to charity and then spamming users announcing this fact?

Increased traffic, increased clicks, increased revenue. It's almost worth handing over a large slice of the pie to charities, as long as the initial pie has grown sufficiently in size to still make it worth your while.

And, in the case of CharityUSA, when there wasn't even a pie in the first place, that's got to be a good move.

These emails have caused concern among web users who assume, perhaps not unreasonably, that they are some kind of scam. After all, web users are increasingly treating all unsolicited mail with suspicion.

I've personally been emailed a number of these mails by friends and readers wondering whether they are legitimate - to which there is no clear answer. It would certainly seem that somewhere down the line a number of US charities are indeed benefiting and at this point I can't refute that point at all but this is still a judgment call you'll have to make based on the above information.

While in the main it would seem an innovative way of creating charitable donations you may feel more comfortable going direct to a registered charity of your choice and making a direct cash donation.

CharityUSA has failed to respond to requests for further information about its business.