Donations business on the Internet or “Good people, give alms as much as you can!”

If to “get at the root” Donation is one of the most ancient way to earn one’s daily bread. It passed all the economic formations and it was well-known to ancient Greek narrator Homer and to Prophetic Boyan who glorified the exploits of princes of Russian land. At that distant time it was used by the strolling singers, acrobats and skomorokhs who did not know yet that it was possible to take the fixed fee for watching the performance or creating the text. In general, Donation – is the voluntary contribution. In one case it is an informal payment for using the results of somebody’s intellectual labor, in another case it is help to those who cannot supply themselves or gratuitous investment to some business.

The word “Contributions” is associated for the majority of Russian-speaking people with the beggary on the church porch or, in the last resort, with the collecting things for the orphanage. The old generation gloomy remembers the “labor days” for benefit of “Red Cross” and “International fund for helping children from the starving countries”. Therefore the word “contributions” which came to Runet from the western nets remained as the English word “donations”. Actually its meaning is possible to consider close to the word “patronage”. In terms of Russian language the word combination “Donations business” is oxymoron, it means that it consists from two mutually exclusive words: business and donations. What is really behind this still little known conception?

Literally since the first days of its existence Internet has become one of the few free grounds for placing information. However the serious companies did not consider it as a mean of advertising. But all sorts of charitable funds and organizations estimated immediately the value of the informational resource where it is possible to place unlimited quantity of intelligence. First the reports about expenditure of the funds of donors, the lists of the largest philanthropists, accounts where it is possible to transfer funds to were published in the web. With the development of the electronic payment systems it became possible to give donations straight in the web. PayPal and PhonePaid were the first who took part in such actions. Later WebMoney joined them. All services began to give active support to the nonprofit institutions. Of course, it was made because of love for neighbor but only partly.

The reason of such active interest of the organizers of the payment systems to the Donations was the usual percents which the system took from the client for the transaction. The wave of small donations from 1 to 3 dollars brought hundreds of thousands of income to the accounts of virtual and mobile payment systems even with the charitable lower percent for transaction of funds. The second reason of love to the donations was the decrease of tax burden provided by laws of the majority of countries for the organizations which take part in the charitable projects. Well, of course, there was a positive image for the community.

The next step of the development of the system of donations through Internet became the virtual charitable services like English Network for Good – site Helping.org and our “CAF Russia” and its resource Blago.ru. As a rule, the serious charitable funds are behind such projects and their founders receive the tax remissions which are many times higher their investments in the charity.

The matter of fact is that the founder of the fund invests in it seriously only once and then bears expenses only for maintaining office and remuneration of labor of employees working in the fund. As a rule, for the billionaires who have companies where hundreds of thousands people work, the expanses for salary for one or two more hundreds employees are not the serious threat for the budget. And the millions of dollars which are “forgiven” by the tax services even allow conveying the part of saved funds to the charitable needs. The fund is replenished mainly by the donating men. The charity is especially popular among the oil magnates and the owners of gaming business. And one more thing: the fund can have its own capital invested not only to the accounts in the bank but also to the extractive sector, development of technologies, manufacture of one or another production. The profit which is received by funds from using their capitals is imposed with the taxes with the lower coefficients.

But let’s go back to our Donations business in Internet. Such projects as Network for Good and “CAF Russia” unite several nonprofit institutions under its aegis and collect target donations for them. It means that the user who transfers the amount marks which project or indigent private individual it is oriented for. Internet allows the charitable foundations to report in detail about every received dollar so the users can not worry whether the money transferred for the charitable needs achieves those whom they were destined for.

The reason of the weak development of such projects in Runet is the Russian legislation where the remissions for the philanthropists are almost not provided and the low standard of life of Russian people as compared with Europe and the USA.

Besides the charitable foundations many internet-encyclopedias, libraries and other resources which contain the useful information, for example like “Wikipedia”, live at the expense of the donations business. Every one who wishes can make the donation for development of these sites at that rate which he will consider acceptable for himself.

Microsoft Company gives the free software for the nonprofit institutions in the network of Microsoft Donations program. But help is made mainly to those who can multiply the fame of Microsoft.

The owners of the internet-magazines and the private sites followed the lead of the charitable portals and free encyclopedias. The donations on the private sites are offered by the straight or hidden way. As a rule, the offer of donations looks like the following: “If you liked the article, picture, design of the page, transfer 30 cents or any other amount to the given account”.

Often the donations on such resources are masked as a “gift” to the owner or the author of the works: it is possible to entertain him with a cup of virtual coffee, shake the drawn hand or present the picture with a flower. Click on the icon sends the user to the page where he is offered to pay for a “gift”. As a rule, it is possible to transfer the donation through sms, special program or directly to the account of the resource owner. The cost of such gifts can be fixed and very small. As a rule, in Runet it is not higher than 10-15 rubles. In the English-speaking part of Internet it can reach 1 dollar. The psychological estimation of the owners of such sites is simple: every one can donate such funny amount.

Some users ask to make a donation with the direct text: “Help to buy a car! I lack 5000 dollars!” – It is possible to see such notices very often in the blogs of “Livejournal”. Near it the panel of the program for transferring the donation is placed, the telephone number is stated where the sms-message should be sent or the electronic account. However strange it is, many people manage to collect the lack money this way. As it is said, many a little makes a real car to the blogger.

Such notices are placed not only in the Livejournals but also on the public bulletin boards and are also sent to the mailbox by the instrumentality of electronic delivery. After collecting the necessary amount the notice givers usually thank everybody who helped them and close the project. The reason of such conscientiousness is simple: Internet is not so anonymous and boundless as it seems to those who work here recently and the auditorium of resources figures out the permanent lovers of freebie very quickly. The cadgers are recognized by the style of writing the notice and are sent to ban. It is very seldom when the residents of Runet are moved to pity with such notices.

The participation in the rank of donators becomes the most popular among the domestic users. As a matter of fact, exactly it got the name Donation business. This kind of payments is possible to attribute to the donations only in terms of voluntary participation of the visitors of resources. The users who take part in this kind of Donation business become the participants of the auction where the target “goods” are the places for links to the resource or the page in blog which belongs to the buyer of place. The user who made the largest contribution is situated in the first line of the table of donations. The next visitor of resource who surpasses the amount of donation of leader takes his place. The leader moves one line lower and the lowest participant of the rank is sacked. The most popular plug-in for organizing such business is Donations Bar. As a rule, Donations Bar is installed by the owners of the promoted sites and popular blogs which take the first lines in the searching systems on the subject requests. The participants of the auctions are those who have not promoted their pages and sites yet. The donations through Donations Bar are made for the purpose of attracting users who already visit the popular pages with the similar thematic to themselves and their resource. The second plus of such donations is the rise of site of the donator in the ranks because the link to it is placed on the popular resource. However some searching engines stopped rising the rates of the sites which have links in Donations Bar of more popular services. To raise the value of rating of the donators the sites owners offer the one who takes the first line some informational product, parallel placement on the advertising place as a free bonus. Many ones make the table with rating to be prevailing – that means that it passes through all pages of the resource.

The owners of the sites with Donations Bar consider its finiteness to be the demerit of this way of collecting donations. If the users of resource or page can give “cups of coffee” and “hands shakings” endlessly giving the owner small but stable income then Donations Bar can become very expansive for the visitors very quickly. The cost of the first place in the rating reaches 100-200 dollars on some English-speaking resources. As a rule after crossing the definite price border the users begin to consider that this service does not correspond to the price and those who wishes to fight for the first place disappears. At this moment the receipts to the purse of the owner of Donations Bar stop. Often the ratings of donations are masked as games where the first place goes to the person who sent the maximal quantity of sms to the certain number. The game “Leader of blog” in “Blogs Mail.ru” can be considered as a donations-program.

The most of the forms of donation business in Internet appeared not long ago and they came to Russia just about a dozen of years ago. Therefore besides the honest participants of the charitable actions there are also all kinds of frauds. Of course, they are from the side which collects donations.

In Internet there are many sites which sell disks with the popular movies and songs and books for the funny price. The user who enters this page and decides to obtain some “bestseller” on the cheap is offered to go to the payment page where the site owner explains that he collects money for the operation for the small sister, considers the political system in Russia to be wrong or does not want to pay taxes, in other words. Therefore he offers to make donation instead of making the payment for service – conclusion contract per se. In this case getting the good is not guaranteed. It is more likely on the contrary. The consumer who rose to the bait of the fraud will not be able to prove his rightness in any judge in Russia. And not many people will decide to be at law because of one-two thousands of rubles.

The difference between donation and payment of deal is that donation is made free of charge and does not imply any compensation in return except the honest gratitude. One more way to get money from the naïve users who are ready to help their neighbors, - is making the pages with the humble stories about the sick children, collapsing refuges for homeless animals and retirement homes which are not heated in the bitter winter. Often the owners of such sites are not the despaired parents and feeble old men but quite healthy students who decided to “collect dough” for the evening in the night club this way. Both the organizations and the private individuals who need help usually have the account in bank for collecting donations because they report on the target usage of collected funds to the tax authorities. For example, the Russian branch of the international charitable foundation “Children of the world” accepts donations only through “Sberbank”. Besides the number of the bank account the address of the office, telephone numbers and all contacts are stated on the site. The specialized services like already mentioned above make the collection of electronic donations. The lawfulness of their activity can be confirmed in the office of the charitable foundation which is the organizer of the project. Address, details and contacts of the organization is usually stated on the site where the collection of donations is made.

As opposed to the solid organizations the frauds publish only the numbers of electronic accounts and call signs in ICQ on their sites. The second sign according to which it is possible to figure out the cheaters is the short time of existence of the site. Often such resources exist only one-two weeks because such activity is considered to be knavish in terms of law. Especially if the site creators use the name of famous charitable foundation as a cover.

One more way to deceive the naive users is the delivery of messages in ICQ or through the email with request to send free sms to the short number to confirm that this mailbox or number is used. Some users send the message. And they found out that the solid amount is withdrawn from the telephone account. In return they receive the message with the gratitude for donation. Sometimes the request to donate from 30 to 300 rubles is written straightforwardly.

For not to become a victim of fraud it is necessary to remember that no one charitable foundation makes spam delivery to mailboxes or telephones and do not apply with the requests of donations to everybody. The ones who are spiritually rich enough are awaited on the charitable resources to share a little bit of their material welfares with unknown people who are given very little by the destiny.

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