Embedded Philanthropy, URL Shorteners for Good, and Maximizing Meaning

categories: innovation, internet, Technology, Trends

Published May 19, 2009 @ 02:42PM PT

With the rise of Twitter and other micro-messaging platforms, there is a booming industry around URL shorteners. These little tools like bit.ly, tinyurl.com, and is.gd take your long link and turn it into a fraction of the characters so as to more easily fit within the 140 character limit.

Today I ran across Good.ly, a URL shorten that donates a portion of the referral fees it receives from product purchases to charter. Basically it works like this. You see some awesome kicks on Zappos. You Tweet, "Omg totally buying these awesome 80%20's! http:good.ly/65fh5." One of your followers clicks on it, is brought to the Zappos page, and then buys the shoes. Assuming that Zappos has a referral program set up (which I actually don't know if they do?), Good.ly gets a small fee for "referring" the sale to them. Good.ly then donates %55 of this fee to one of a growing number of charities.

This is an example of what Peter Deitz and the folks at Social Actions might call "embedded philanthropy." The idea of embedded philanthropy is that different companies, like Good.ly, are embedding a philanthropic component into a huge array of our day-to-day commercial transactions. In some ways, it's like moving a piece of corporate social responsibility to the user side, and making it a part of the commercial relationship between the company and it's client (or user, for the case of online products).

I don't think that this sort of embedded philanthropy is going to in any way diminish more "traditional" forms of philanthropic action. I think it's power is that it reflects a growing desire I think we're experiencing to integrate our values with our commercial and career desicions. We're increasingly all about maximizing value and meaning - both the value and meaning we derive from the array of our experiences and the value and meaning we contribute to communities and causes we care about.

It seems to me that these embedded philanthropic tools are on the front part of that shifting curve, and seem to be a good place to experimenting with ideas and capital.

This blog post is part of the Embedded Philanthropy Blog Series, sponsored by Telecom for Charity. The blog series was launched in May 2009 to highlight expert thinking and encourage discussions on the state of embedded philanthropy in today's economy.

Share this Post

Comments (1)

This is the first I have heard of the term, "embedded philanthropy". It makes sense that embedded philanthropy has tied into the new kid on the block, shortened URL sites.
I personally have signed up for the Hotmail, "i'm E-mailing for the Greater Good",and use Goodsearch as a search engine. There are other search engines, like SearchKindly that donate to charities also. Even Tripadvisor had an embedded philanthropy in the form of a competition a few months ago.
This is a wonderful way to bring consumers into philanthropy by creating public awareness of the causes and charities. I like to call this form of philanthropy on my businessthatcares blog, a little less elegantly, "click and save".

Posted by Lalia Helmer on 05/20/2009 @ 12:14PM PT
- Report close
  You must be signed in to report content.
- Reply
- Like
Reply to thread
For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment. In the process we will also create a Change.org account for you so you can track this and future conversations. Don't worry - we won't spam you. We just want to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

reply to thread started by by Lalia
Check Spelling
- Email me when there are new posts to this thread
- Comment Policy
Cancel Reply

Add a Comment

For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

Comment

Check Spelling

Email me when there are new posts to this thread
Comment Policy

Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.

Author

Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.