It’s designed to help non-profits and people in need to raise money via the web. It’s called Chip In, and with a few clicks you create a widget that you can post to your website/blog/etc. so people can donate. I heard an interview with one of the founders and according to him, what a lot of people are doing is they might support say the treatment efforts for anklehiplitis of a firefighter’s organization, but not the organizations efforts to ban multistory buildings, so they create a widget to collect money for that and that alone, and then turn over the money they collect to the organization. The widgets are also designed so that they can be easily copied and pasted to a site/blog/etc. So someone who visits a page with a widget supporting what they think is a worthy cause can simply copy it to their site, thus enabling them to help spread the word.
Another thing that folks are doing, according to the creator, is they’re using the widget to help friends in need. In the interview, he related how a high school girl went to another state to visit relatives and became ill. The family didn’t have the money for her treatment or to bring her home, so one of her classmates put a widget up for her on his Myspace page and her classmates were able to raise enough money to help pay for her medical expenses and bring her back home.
Supposedly, they’re working on making the widgets very sophisticated, but easy to use. You’ll be able to do things like podcasts, RSS feeds and other things with them.
It’s a great idea. I’m tempted to start one myself, but just because I want some money. Doesn’t seem to be any reason why I shouldn’t.
If I’m tempted, but resist, others will not - so there are bound to be some of these created that purport to be charitable collections, but are in fact just lining the pockets of some student somewhere. Still, nobody is compelled to donate, so I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s a really good idea - I wonder how it works in terms of fees (paypal and other), etc. I wonder if ChipIn can actually be trusted to hand over the fund at the end of each scheme, or even, if they can be trusted not to skim it - how would donors or recipients know if this was happening?
It all depends upon what you’re raising the money for. I’ve heard of people putting up “begging” sites to help them out of a financial jam, which doesn’t bother me. I don’t know if one used one to say, “I want to go to Thailand and get a bunch of hookers and have one crazy sex orgy.” that I’d be cool with it. (Unless they promised to post pictures. ;))
I guess it’s good capitalism - nobody is compelled to donate; and if they think you’re just a scrounging slacker, they can just click away, or go and badmouth you on their blog or something.