Givezilla

The ECS-Powered Givezilla site was built to provide Non Profit organizations with a simple interface into the Amazon Associates program to assist their fundraising efforts through their constituent's online shopping activity through Amazon.com.  The Givezilla business model provides all the development and management resources needed for a Non Profit organization to participate in the Associates program for the generation of fundraising dollars through referral fees.

Example Givezilla sites include Aspen Center For Autism, The Barbara Mix Foundation, The XXYY Project, EcoCycle.

Comments

[everyone]

This is not a charitable anything. All it ensures is that Givezilla receives up to 50% of any product purchased so it's simply a market ploy which preys upon the needy. Sure the concept is fine and everything looks swell. But if it is charitable then the charity organization should be afforded the full referral fee for any product purchased. Hence the service should be offered for free like many Open Source AWS/ECS pieces already available.

This IS NOT charitable... r GiveZilla exploits those who have a need by enabling their own greed engine ... truely charitable gives 100% to charity.

[Richard Waldvogel]

Dear Anonymous,

Thanks for taking the time to check out our web site, but your comments contain many inaccurate statements and assumptions about our service and organization that need to be clarified.

Firstly, Givezilla does not recieve 50% of the referral fees generated through our site. In fact, to date we have donated 100% of the referral fees generated by the site to the Non Profit organizations enrolled with Givezilla.

Our mission is to provide a service that Non Profits can use for a long term and sustainable fundraising solution and to provide this service requires servers, software and bandwidth expenses.

We have worked closely with the Non Profit sector and with their feedback and input, have created a business model that is agreeable to all parties involved and not a "ploy which preys upon the needy" as you stated. It would be an injustice to the Non Profit organizations that we work with to create a short term, unsustainable, no growth solution as many online companies have tried and failed at doing in the "dot bomb" era.

Yes, there are several Open Source ECS technolgies available, but the harsh reality is that most Non Profit organizations have neither the technical expertise on staff or operating budget to host and continually maintain this technology.

Secondly, your utopian statement that "truely charitable gives 100% to charity" is an irresponsible one. You must realize that a percentage of every dollar that is donated to the Red Cross is applied to the expenses they incur for things like their website and their executive's salaries. Everytime a donation is made online by credit card, Visa, MasterCard or whatever merchant is used is going to take a percent of donation on top of a processing fee. Why do they do this? It's so they can continue to provide services for those in need.

At Givezilla, we're constantly evaluating ways that will provide us with the ability to give 100% of the referral fees generated through our site to the Non Profits while allowing us to continue hosting, supporting and further develop the technical solutions that most Non Profits are in desperate need of and unable to generate themselves.

Lastly, I take personal offense to your erroneous and uneducated statement that we're "exploiting those in need by enabling their own greed engine." We maintain a personal and professional business relationship with every organization that has agreed to use our service. Our customers understand the value that we bring to their organizations and constituents and realize that to utilize these services currently comes at an agreed upon expense to ensure long term sustainability. If you would have done you're reseach and contacted several of our customers before making this untruthful assumption you would have found our customers to be extremely satisfied with the business relationship they have with Givezilla.

In the future, if you feel the need to slander Givezilla (hence the anonymous post I assume) I'd be happy to personally address any ideas or critisms you may have.

Sincerely,

Richard Waldvogel
Founder
Givezilla LLC
rwaldvogel - @ - givezilla - . - com

[supporter]

@everyone: Isn't it good, that people are engaged in helping others. I think they should get paid for their work (maybe you are rich and don't need get paid), or do you want them to sleep on the streets. A little research would showed you, that no company got rich with their social engagement.

@Mr. Waldvogel: I found the following information in your Operation Agreement: 4. REFERRAL FEE PAYMENT - We will pay you referral fees on a quarterly basis. Approximately 30 days following the end of each calendar quarter, we will send you a check for the referral fees earned (typically 5-7.5%) from every item purchased. Givezilla retains 2-2.5% of the commissions to pay for Hosting, Bandwidth, Support, Tools and Technology, and Account Management.

Hmm, that sounds different from what you wrote to everyone.

Whatever; I love to see that you are helping to make the world a better place for everyone. And that is what counts to me.

[Richard Waldvogel]

Hello supporter and thanks for the kind words.

I'll try to clarify specifically how our commission structure works to hopefully alleviate any confusion.

In our user agreement we state that we will retain 2.5% of the referral fee percent earned on each product. So I understand where "everyone" gets the impression that we actually retain 50% if the organizations referral rate is at 5% per product.

However, Amazon is gracious enough to provide an additional 2.5% commission on products sold through their ECS Remote Cart technology. So if our Referral Rate is at 5% (1-20 items sold) the purchase (if it qualifies) would actually generate around 7.5%. So our clients earn the same amount of money as if they would use a basic Associates implementation themselves (without using WebServices). Our clients can also reach a much higher Referall Rate Percentate under the Performance Fee Structure through us than they can on their own.

In our agreement we are reserving the right to retain the additional 2.5% generated through webservices to cover our expenses. But as I mentioned, we have donated 100% of the referral fees generated to our Non Profits as our current costs have been manageable enough for us to pay out of pocket (i.e. my personal checking account which I consider my monthly donation to the Non Profit world). But as we grow, our expenses will grow as well and I doubt my checkbook will be able to pay for the bandwidth as I hope my daughter will want to go college someday :-), so this structure is in place to help grow the services that we provide to our clients.

Knowing first hand the amount of time and energy it takes to build one of these sites, we think it's a pretty good deal for a Non Profit and one that they have been extremely pleased with in comparison to their other fundraising programs. No out of pocket expenses, no development, maintainence, staff or hosting costs. Getting people to their store and cashing the check we send them every quarter are their only tasks.

I hope this clarifies things and if it doesn't, please let me know and I'll try to explain further.

Sincerley,
Richard Waldvogel