A Website for Sick Children Needing Help - To Make One or Not

[Philippine Beach Resorts]

There are many sick children here in the Philippines whose parents cant afford their medication The sad part is we really cant rely on the government for help. Good thing the media is doing something to help out by soliciting for donations from big companies, but the problem is too big to handle since a large percentage of the Philippine's population is poor.

I myself have been donating a portion of my adsense income each month. But since a treatment usually lasts for a couple of months, I can help only one child at a time.

I have this idea of making a website about those children needing help and receive donations for them. But before I proceed, I would like to ask you ALL your honest opinion about this. Should I go for it? Or is it in bad taste?

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I thinks it's a good idea. The internet is a good medium for poor countries. You should check (around you)
what you have to do that it looks like trustful. maybe you need some bigger well known partner who gets the donations. websites for charity are fine but there are also a lot of scams.

[Philippine Beach Resorts]

thanks olaf

so to look trustworthy, i should work with a local charity group here, like the church maybe. thats a really helpful suggestion. since what im worried about is being suspected as a scammer thats why i am hesitant to push thru with it.

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I agree that being suspected as a scammer is the worse thing that can happen. To eliminate the chances make sure that you have a professional designed web site, provide documentation, and show to the people that this organization is working.

For instance you can have a blog in the site where you will cover various events, maybe write some stories from the children that you help, etc. I believe there is a lot of people that want to donate to such an organization, you just have to give them an easy way

BTW good luck with this project

yes team up with a local charity or register one yourself. Being a registered non-profit organization will make it a lot more trustworthy, but also keep in mind that this will cause some additional work for you. You will have to keep detailed administration on everything.

[Philippine Beach Resorts]

For instance you can have a blog in the site where you will cover various events, maybe write some stories from the children that you help, etc.

yeah, a blog will definitely be a part of the site since thats where i will describe the child in need and post photos too.

yes team up with a local charity or register one yourself. Being a registered non-profit organization will make it a lot more trustworthy, but also keep in mind that this will cause some additional work for you. You will have to keep detailed administration on everything.

more work indeed. maybe i will just partner with an existing one to make it easier.

thanks very much for all your input guys!

Bravo - Very good idea!

If you need some inspiration or ideas, have a look at my Charity Website for the Children on Koh Tao Thailand It took about ayear until people started to notice that it is not only cheap and good advertising for local businisses but at the same time doing something good by helping the kids on Koh Tao. The site has reached 2 million page views in the first year and all advertisers can see the progress 'life' on the site.

Let me just tell you that is a big commitment once it takes off. A lot of hours to put in, many many people to talk to and so on.
But in the end of the day, it's worth it. Everytime i go to the school or to the summer camp and see the happy kids i know why i do it.

I'll be amongst the first setting a free frontpage link to your new website. 

George

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Bravo - Very good idea!

If you need some inspiration or ideas, have a look at my Charity Website for the Children on Koh Tao Thailand

...

where is this a charity site? it's an ordinary portal site

What you expect Olaf? A big statement that says

"Give Us Money"?

I'm afraid that's not the way it works. 

You'll need a portal page because you'll need a forum, you'll need members and most important volunteers to get things moving.

You will need to setup advertising pages and if you don't want to do all the work by yourself, i strongly recommend to use a content management system where users can add content and partners can add and edit their own pages. (wherefor they pay a yearly amount of $). That's where the charity kicks in. 

Now that the site is setup and high ranked in all search engines for ALL Koh Tao related keywords it has become easy to sell partner pages. Our goal is to get 100 pages until the end of 2008. That will be enough money to finance most of our projects, buy school books that are urgently needed and still have someething left for extraordinary exprences.
 
A charity site that makes real money for a real pupose needs to be able to interact with it's users. Next to come is the integration of the shark database to the Koh Tao Community Website. That should give us some traffic.

By the way, if you check the volunteer forum you can find quite some success stories.

What doesn't seem to work at all is the PayPal donation link.

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What you expect Olaf? A big statement that says

"Give Us Money"?

I'm afraid that's not the way it works. 

no, but some clear information that the site is a charity site (and why) Charity doesn't mean only collecting money, but also the information about where the money is spend for.

I except this for a charity website:
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Make_a_Gift.asp

Olaf - that depends widley on how much money he wants to spend in promoting the charity site. Or how big the organization already is when they setup the website. Vince doesn't live in Europe or the US. The guy lives on the Phillipines. Thousands of islands and communities. I'm also certain that vince does not want to invest 1% of the money the people on your example site have spent on promotion.
I was just showing a way how it is possible to achieve great goals in a relativley short time without investing any additional money to the work he is alredy willing to spend on the project.

Setting up a nice clean sit like your example will not bring him the money he needs for his projects in a useful manner of time. Here you really have to wait for donations...and wait...and wait...

The way we do it we involve local business who also profit from their donation. Nothing lost and literally everybody i talk to lately wants to get on the website. It may have taken a year, but from now on we only have to collect the money twice a year.

The other important side of the medallion has been shortly touched by Niko. The legal aspect and the paperwork. My way, partners pay for their advertising. That's considred 'small business' here and is tax free. I personally donate 100% of the income from all partnerpages to the community. That way - not many questions asked.
And if you take a bit more time to look around at the Koh Tao Community Site, i'm sure you'll find out where the money goes.

We don't need tidy looking tie carriers on our front page. peo;ple her know what we do and that we make a difference. We are working closely with the local government and the school authorities. We are also working very closely with I-to-I who sends us many volunteers. - That would be my next step, by the way - Once the project is structured getting in contact with I-to-I.

If you want to make a difference, start with small steps.

No offend Olaf, just trying to help and it's a subject that i live on daily bases, so i know what i'm talking about. Charity has become big business. Have you really looked at this website before you posted the link? 9 artikels under publications? actually not much more on that site than "Give us Money".....

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Hey George,

sure we are here to discuss the different sites of this item (I hope Vince has some good on this discussion )

On the other site my reaction that I can't see any charity aspect on your site should tell you that maybe something is wrong (or it's just the different culture where we come from)

The example link was some link I found on matt cutts weblog (didn't know this organization)

[Philippine Beach Resorts]

What doesn't seem to work at all is the PayPal donation link.

you mean no one is donating thru the paypal donate button?

add: thanks for that frontpage link too!

I think it's better if you just leave the information on your page .. Since people don't trust websites easily nowadays ... You can ask them to contact you if they willing to help or donate.

Vince - In 9 month what that PayPal link is up and running, not a single payment has come in. Not one lausy buck!


Olaf - There is nothing wrong and you're right, we don't 'frontpage' the charity aspect. Since we don't really depend the paypal or CC like donating. That's what im trying to say. We involve real people, with real businesses instead of waiting for cyber donations.
The letter from Or-bor-tor (the local government) in Thai and English on the front page also helped us to gain the advertisers trust.


Tintin - You're absolutly right. Charity has become a business and people don't trust those sites anymore. That's why you can not 'kick-start' such a project. We keep it local. Our partner-advertisers all know us personaly, they see what we do in real life. And our 170 school and nursery kids tell their parents about what we are doing. the word spreads, the trust comes and all is good.


We additionally try to get volunteers thrue the website, which also works fine. In genearal it's just a differen approach that at the end of 2008, i can promise you that already, will pay for all ongoing projects and will do so from then on until ...? Why should it ever stop?

Now if you have done that for one region, and you're still not happy with what you have done. Move on to the next island and do it again. You'll find that they have exactly the same or at least very similar problems. Once you done that, link the two projects, and do it again on the next island and so on. Small steps, a continously growing project will get attention. Not at the beginning though, that's gonna be a loneley fight, and there have been many days where i asked myself " what the f@* am i doing here? Today i say YES it was worth it and it still is and it will always be worth it.

Love those smile in your pictures.  I appreciate what you've done for others . May you a very happy new year.

[Philippine Beach Resorts]

I think it's better if you just leave the information on your page .. Since people don't trust websites easily nowadays ... You can ask them to contact you if they willing to help or donate.

yeah. i think thats what i will do. a blog about the children ive helped and presently helping is what im thinking of making.

Not a bad idea, now that i think about it. I'm too new to the blogging concept to say much about it. But once your blog is up and running, ou could also make pages for partners this way. Offer them a whole page for a yearly price just like we do on the Koh Tao Community website. that will give you the advantage of not only getting a steady flow of cash over time, but it also creates new relevant content.

A hint on the side, it took me a whole year to figure it out, when you go to potential partners/advertisers, don't ask them to provide pictures and text and you'll set it up. You'll waste most of the time waiting for their content. Offer them to copy text and pictures from their existing website. That speeds things up enormesly.

Don't put the text up as is though, copy - yes, paste - no!
Change titles and alter the text. Make the text keyword rich and rearange paragraphs. Change the names of the pictures. Never ever put a picture on the net with a useless name like "picture1" or "logo_2". that would be huge waste of SEO. Name them "phillipines" phillipines islands" or whatever is related to your theme. I have a coupple of newer sites (since i'm aware of this) running which make 50% of their Google traffic from Google Images! This comes especially heavy to account for projects like yours. what do people wanna see when they search for phillipnes on the net? Right Pictures! Same for children wellfare, smiling faces, happy children.

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yeah George, it's time to start your own wordpress blog

Vince, great plan on the sidebar is always room for a donation link. And a blog is great for website promotion. actually you start a community too (have some guest writer and sell posts to sponsors)

Sure paypal donations on regular websites doesn't work, but I'm sure a lot of people have donated for the tsunami using paypal a few years ago

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I will agree that donations work for such a site. Just think all those organizations (greenpeace, actionaid, etc.) that survive from donations only.

Vince, you should keep us informed on this project. I am sure many of us will be glad to help (I mean help in technical stuff like script setup, seo, etc.)

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