Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

adsbycoffee.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#21

Post by corin_ »

videoappeal wrote: post #18
corin_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong that this is sometimes the case, but definitely worth noting that plenty of the best charities in the world are non-profits with some salaried employees, it doesn't automatically make them evil.

For sure, I hope you dont object I've just registered adsbycappuccino, my idea is to make it a non-profit ad agency that does work for benefit of charities, in my business plan Ive decided to pay myself $120k pa (is yours the same? we can share a coffee and talk) presuming we get that via donations and running some commercial ads in the roration. It should take off as those stupid HN readers will see non-profit and p…

Yeah, that's an example of it being bad, what I'm saying is that a charitee with paid staff isn't automatically evil, it's not so black and white.

For example, let's say this charity has a range of options for getting free advert spots on sites for charities. Option A is to have people who care but don't have the experience, and they get X monthly impressions. Option B is to pay someone a low full-time wage, say $30k, and they get Y monthly impressions. Option C is to pay a fantastic salesman $120k/year and he can pull in Z monthly impressions. Until you know the numbers, is option C guaranteed to be bad for the charity?

And of course that's just an example of a high salary - my first comment, that you replied to, was talking more about charities like Oxfam, where without any paid staff they just couldn't operate, they're far too big to be run on a 100% volunteer basis. But people they do employ are paid lower-than-typical salaries for their positions, and a large number of their work force are indeed volunteers.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#22

Post by videoappeal »

brudgers wrote: post #20
videoappeal wrote: post #3

Can you clarify non-profit, non-profit nowadays means very little, ICANN is non-profit and is about to fuck up top-top level domains so their CEO can buy a helicopter. Do you draw a salary and how much?

U.S. Nonprofit != charity

Indeed, but perception is a powerful thing, a non-profit for charities especially. Microsoft and [insert-evil-company-of-choice] could be non-profit if you soak up any remaining revenue by salary/bonuses. I mean ICANN is non-profit and the CEO already has put a down payment on a learjet from his new $185,000 tld registrar. My point is that they are soliciting free work from HN readers on some illusion of acting like a charity (it might turn out legit and verifiable, who knows) whilst being as transparent as a SOPA.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#23

Post by brudgers »

kanebennett wrote: post #4
steve8918 wrote: post #2

You really should add some information about who your team is in an "About Us" page. By conspicuously leaving that information out, I don't trust anything about the website. Unfortunately, in this day and age of scams, you need to legitimize yourself.

Hi Steve, Absolutely - thanks for your advice, it's something we'll definitely add!

The private domain registration is not a good sign for a not for profit.

It makes it hard for someone to look up your 990. How about posting a link?

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#24

Post by videoappeal »

corin_ wrote: post #21
videoappeal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, I hope you dont object I've just registered adsbycappuccino, my idea is to make it a non-profit ad agency that does work for benefit of charities, in my business plan Ive decided to pay myself $120k pa (is yours the same? we can share a coffee and talk) presuming we get that via donations and running some commercial ads in the roration. It should take off as those stupid HN readers will see non-profit and p…

Yeah, that's an example of it being bad, what I'm saying is that a charitee with paid staff isn't automatically evil, it's not so black and white. For example, let's say this charity has a range of options for getting free advert spots on sites for charities. Option A is to have people who care but don't have the experience, and they get X monthly impressions. Option B is to pay someone a low full-time wage, say $30k…

Agreed. But with no transparency it pays to be cynical. In addition, bootstrapping it by asking HN to commit their time and web space whilst drawing a salary is a bit of a slap in the face from day 1. Im sure a consortium of true HN readers could get this off the ground without salary employees, maybe in six months then it would make sense to appoint salary positions such as a treasurer and top-notch biz dev person.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#25

Post by TylerE »

kanebennett wrote: post #14
corin_ wrote: post #9

Can you give a little more information regarding ad space donations, for example: - What countries do you need traffic from? - Do you require "a spot" on a site, or could donors just give X impressions where X is whatever number can fit in around commercial banners? - I don't think I've ever come across 250x100 adverts before, why this size? And more importantly, why only this size, would you not be interested if peo…

Thanks for your interest! -While we will gladly accept traffic from almost anywhere at the moment, we are restricted to English-speaking audiences. -That isn't an issue at all: we don't require a continuos 'spot' per se, a segment of your monthly traffic would be perfect. -While the size itself is flexible to an extent, we do try to ensure our ads are subtle and non-intrusive, and the 250x100 rectangle is a perfect m…

You should really re-think your stance on the size. As a website publisher, anyone wanting to run a non-standard size is going to have to A: pay me for an exclusive spot, because I can't run any other ads in that slot and B: pay for my time to write custom code for your ad. Doesn't happen often.

That's all assuming that's a size I can even fit into my design without making the site look bad. The 250px width is awkward. For us, our right rail is sized around a 300px wide big box ad, 250 is enough off of that that it's going to ruin the solid right-side margin we've designed.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#26

Post by jimrandomh »

I like this; if you do it right, it could do an enormous amount of good. That said, I think you should be choosy about which charities you promote; rather than let charities seek you out, you should seek out the very best charities and promote them exclusively. The amount of good-per-dollar varies by multiple orders of magnitude, so the difference in impact between promoting only the best charities and promoting average charities can be enormous. I would suggest directing people to GiveWell's (http://givewell.org) top charities list, or to one of the specific charities on it.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#27

Post by shortformblog »

Would you guys be open to trying weekly sponsored posts on a Tumblr blog? (We're over at http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/) We'd have to talk about it some more to figure out the right way to handle it, but I see it as a way to unobtrusively play with a sponsored posts style (which would work well with Tumblr, where everything is dashboard-oriented) while doing something good with it. I have 20k followers there, so it might be worth trying. Let me know.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#28

Post by kanebennett »

TylerE wrote: post #25
kanebennett wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your interest! -While we will gladly accept traffic from almost anywhere at the moment, we are restricted to English-speaking audiences. -That isn't an issue at all: we don't require a continuos 'spot' per se, a segment of your monthly traffic would be perfect. -While the size itself is flexible to an extent, we do try to ensure our ads are subtle and non-intrusive, and the 250x100 rectangle is a perfect m…

You should really re-think your stance on the size. As a website publisher, anyone wanting to run a non-standard size is going to have to A: pay me for an exclusive spot, because I can't run any other ads in that slot and B: pay for my time to write custom code for your ad. Doesn't happen often. That's all assuming that's a size I can even fit into my design without making the site look bad. The 250px width is awkwar…

Thanks for the details Tyler! The size is of course flexible, by suggesting 250x100 I was just trying to give a general idea of the small, non-intrusive style we're requesting. I've updated the post to make this clearer.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#29

Post by TylerE »

kanebennett wrote: post #28
TylerE wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really re-think your stance on the size. As a website publisher, anyone wanting to run a non-standard size is going to have to A: pay me for an exclusive spot, because I can't run any other ads in that slot and B: pay for my time to write custom code for your ad. Doesn't happen often. That's all assuming that's a size I can even fit into my design without making the site look bad. The 250px width is awkwar…

Thanks for the details Tyler! The size is of course flexible, by suggesting 250x100 I was just trying to give a general idea of the small, non-intrusive style we're requesting. I've updated the post to make this clearer.

Look into the IAB (Internet Advertising Board) standard sizes. You want to pick one (or more) of those.

Re: Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

#30

Post by topherjaynes »

corin_ wrote: post #9

Can you give a little more information regarding ad space donations, for example: - What countries do you need traffic from? - Do you require "a spot" on a site, or could donors just give X impressions where X is whatever number can fit in around commercial banners? - I don't think I've ever come across 250x100 adverts before, why this size? And more importantly, why only this size, would you not be interested if peo…

I'd steer clear of the 250x100 and other odd sizes. Stick with IAB sizes 160x600, 300x250, 728x90, which are the predominate adsizes. You'll be more likely to get into rotation on websites as a default ad with these size.

Also on corn_41 edit2: you're going to hear the word transparency a lot in the digital ad space. Everyone wants it and expects it so the more information you can put out the better.

Post reply on HN