We found ourselves watching American Idol Gives Back while getting ready to go out last night. Quite possibly one of the worst mixes of self-promotion and blatant heart-string tugging I have seen – their attempt at Telethon irony was truly painful. But, in the portion I watched, they had a few good causes features.

Nothing But Nets

So I went via the United Nations Foundation site and found a couple of funds that the TV special had got me thinking about.

For the week ending 26 April I’m donating to The UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women who have a lengthy but self explanatory name at least.

And for the week ending 19th April I’m donating to Nothing But Nets who have a nice simple mission of getting bed nets to Malaria stricken regions.

They both use the same donation form and process I came across when I gave to The Global Fund via the UN Foundation a few weeks back so it was nice and easy.

I thought I’d check out who was nominated in the Charitable Organizations category this year.

ASPCA are the American Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Their site is, predictably, full of sad little animals staring at your with eyes pleading for donations. But once you get beyond that they have a wealth of information for pet owners, lovers and a wide variety of calls-to-action: whether how to treat your own animal better or how to rescue those owned by the less caring.

The Teenage Cancer Trust is a British focused charity who support youth with cancer. The site is tidy and has a good mix of well written copy and video content. The main functional innovation seems to be a support social network. I couldn’t tell how well implemented or utilised this was but it felt a little “obvious” as far as targeting youth are concerned. Perhaps it is awesome.

The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy are, in their words, “the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people.” Their site is a bit of a mess navigation wise but it has some good information and suggested actions. I do also like that they include clear links to their ratings on various charity-assessment sites.

Bono founded ONE.org and it is the most charity-cool of the nominees. It’s also the most well designed site and keeps things nice and simple. But the calls-to-action seem more focused on promoting the charity itself than taking any useful action.

The final nominee, SocialVibe aren’t a charity as such but a way of raising money for charities by joining up and taking sponsored actions (by the likes of Nike and Electrolux) rather than donating directly. Its definitely youth-focused, entirely in flash, and attempts to get you to push content to Facebook at every opportunity so I’m not likely to make it a regular visit. But if watching a TVC from HTC can make a charity money I’m happy to do it.

I was planning on picking the best website and donating to that charity but in the end I opted to give to The Nature Conservancy because they were running a campaign focused on the recent Gulf oil spill. Their donation process was fairly standard – with a nice post-donation page suggesting what you could do next. I always find the receipt page after donating a bit of a let-down as an end of journey.

An update on my The Fred Hollows Foundation donation from a few weeks back: I received some snail-mail from them which had two quite useful follow-ups. One was a Mother’s day targeted campaigning suggesting I donate on her behalf as a gift. An email probably would have sufficed for that.

The second was a summary and receipt for my donations to them for the whole tax year. What I liked about this – as I’ve not been one to claim a rebate on my donations in the past – is that they calculate for you how much your tax rebate on the donations will be and then suggest you donate it back to them. Excellent notion.

It’s worth a watch for the history and for some kitsch entertainment seeing both the past and the future through an early 90s lens. Watching the last episode, which had an interview with someone who was involved in the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), settled my donation for this week.

When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990 — well before the Internet was on most people’s radar — and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.

The EFF site is focused on news updates and campaign information. They also have handy “rights packs”, such as one for bloggers’. When it comes to donation options you can buy some swag (such as the stickers you see on everything in The IT Crowd), give as a one-off, join as a supporting member or choose from a number of other options. Of course you can also support them, and the issues, but visiting their “action center” which has email templates and the like for current causes.

I chose the membership path this time – they have a nice form which allows you to choose from a fixed donation amount or enter anything. Either way this amount then filters the “membership premiums” that are displayed – from stickers up to packs of t-shirts and caps depending on how much you give. I like swag but I chose the “select this option if you would like your entire contribution to go to EFF’s work.” button.

The form is actually hosted on their own servers (when geeks do charity) and splits the process into two pages, with a third for confirmation – slightly more involved feeling than most donation pages but easy-to-use nonetheless. They present a thank you and a receipt immediately and then email a copy. Easy.

Victim Support is the community response to people affected by crime and trauma. We help people hurt by crime and trauma find hope, strength and resilience in the face of grief and trauma. Our 24/7 service is provided free of charge in communities large and small throughout New Zealand. It is delivered by trained volunteers who give their time, energy and expertise to help people in their local community.

Which got me thinking, so this week’s donation is going to Victim Support.

Victim Support

Their site is simple and cleanly divides content into silos for victims/donors/volunteers/researchers. The donor silo sends you straight to a hosted donation form which is fairly standard and appears integrated with the site (but isn’t). The only failing was that required fields weren’t indicated in any way. Being given the choice of an “anonymous” donation which removed the need for any details except for credit card was nice – though clearly this isn’t actually anonymous. If you choose to give your details you do get the option to decide if/how you want receipting – either none, email or post. Which many other charities could do with – having a random receipt turn up in the mail a week or two later is just wasteful of some of my donation.

Nice and easy.

I’m not really a big dress-up fan so I figured I would give my charity donation to Plunket this week instead of making myself look silly(-er than normal).

Plunket is the largest provider of support services for the development, health and wellbeing of children. These services are available free to New Zealand families with children from birth to 5 years old.

Once you’ve had fun turning yourself into a virtual hero and posting it to facebook you can click through to the donation process which goes to a skinned paged hosted by givealittle. They’re a local third-party service for smaller charities who need a hand accepting donations. I was a little surprised Plunket needed one.

Plunket - Superheroes

Their form was a single page that was easy to complete – but it confused me by telling me that there was a credit card fee – not normally something you get informed of. This was placed on on top of the amount I entered.

I received an email promptly after with a PDF receipt attached – but it came from givealittle.co.nz rather than Plunket and I had to look carefully on both email and receipt to confirm it was related to my donation. It also confirmed that my donation amount was the amount I volunteered + the transaction fee. A little odd. I realise a charity doesn’t get every cent donate, this seemed a little TMI.

Either way, great charity and now I have an excuse when I’m asked when I’m not dressed-up tomorrow!

As I finally had a credit card again (seriously, I have the worst luck getting things delivered to this apartment) I was able to send money to The Global Fund and Fred Hollows Foundation from previous weeks. They both presented printable receipts after the donation form and the latter also sent email confirmation. Sweet.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is

an international financing institution that invests the world’s money to save lives. To date, it has committed US$ 19.3 billion in 144 countries to support large-scale prevention, treatment and care programs against the three diseases.

They were also on Peter Singer’s recommended charity list mentioned in last week’s donation entry.

The site has a great deal of information on their work which includes a nice evaluation of their performance over 5-years. As well as success case-studies such as this story about fighting homophobia and AIDS-related stigma in Cuba.

The organisation also run a parallel site that allows those involved in the fight against these diseases to coordinate their efforts.

MyGlobalFund is your communication tool to join the fight against the world’s three deadliest pandemics: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The thing about The Global Fund is that they are a charity aggregate who receive funding from a number of other organisations – so you can’t give directly. They link to the United Nations Foundation for making contributions. Who have a good page explaining their support for the fund and linking through to a single-page donation form.

But I’m still waiting for my new credit card to arrive so if there are any problems with it then I’ll not know for a day or two.

Singer’s latest book is The Life You Can Save which is very pertinent to my spent+10 project – being about,

Part plea, part manifesto, part handbook, this short and surprisingly compelling book sets out to answer two difficult questions: why people in affluent countries should donate money to fight global poverty and how much each should give. Singer (Animal Liberation) dismantles the justifications people make for not giving and highlights the successes of such efforts as microfinance in Bangladesh, GiveWell’s charitable giving and the 50% League, where members donate more than half their wealth

I’ve not actually read the book, so I’ll add it to my get-around-to list. Singer covered a fairly random range of topics in person (mostly due to the interviewer) but did touch on charitable giving a few times. He mentioned the website for the book contains a list of charities, which you can find here.

I figured this week I’d give to a charity on the list. The first to catch my eye today was The Fred Hollows Foundation as we were talking about glasses earlier. They describe themselves as,

We are a non profit organisation dedicated to facilitating comprehensive and quality eye care in developing countries, especially through the provision of appropriate training. The Foundation is committed to the fundamental human right of health for all and is independent, politically unaligned and secular.

The site has plenty of information presented both clearly and compellingly – above average for charity sites I have been encountering lately. Their donation options include a good range of purchasing specific outcomes (“restore sight for one person”), giving-on-behalf of, one-off donations and regular giving. Unfortunately this is let down when you actually go to donate as all paths lead to the one form which you must select your option again on (or worse – downloadable forms for regular giving).

The form is the usual one-pager and fairly clear. I was disappointed to see i could enter my “Supporter ID” which was described as, “If you have donated to The Foundation before and know your supporter ID number, please enter it here, as this will help us process your donation efficiently.” Which implied some manual processing that could be automated better than this.

I got stuck at this point – entirely my own fault – as I canceled my credit card this afternoon. So I’ll have to wait to later this week to actually donate when the new card arrives!

WWF International

On the weekend I watched a nature documentary. Which is not something I normally do. Confessions first – I did so because Stephen Fry was the host and I’m a complete fan boy.

In the series he was revisiting endangered animals which were were featured in Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine’s, Last Chance to radio/book series from the 1990s. This particular episode focused on the Northern White Rhino and some band of Gorilla that took a trip that nearly killed Stephen to reach.

I’d still rather see him as Jeeves in Jeeves and Wooster but it was interesting enough and made me decide to go with an environmental charity for the week. So I’ve chosen WWF.

WWF is one of those charities that raise the question of whether I donate to the New Zealand branch or the International. I opted to go with the latter in this case – I’m not quite sure why, the sites were very cookie-cutter.

The international site didn’t feel as professional as I’d expect and felt littered with unnecessary social media sharing badges but had fairly decent information. The donation process was slightly torturous – they made the default choice a regular contribution with a less obvious link to a one-off. This then sent me through 2 redirects before the actual Worldpay hosted payment page. One of these required a manual click to get past and all pages were poorly styled. A pity.

So far I’ve just received a default Worldpay receipt via email with nothing from the charity. I’d hope an international charity could do better – I can see how many people might have dropped off along the way.

Still, go captain planet!

UNIFEM is the women’s fund at the United Nations, dedicated to advancing women’s rights and achieving gender equality. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programmes and strategies that foster women’s empowerment.

As an international charity backed by the UN their site is satisfyingly slick – doing a good job of communicating a range of general issues they are mandated to address and specific campaigns they are undertaking. Donating thought is the same-old experience with most charity sites – a single uber donation form with few frills.

UNIFEM

The bottom of the donation form did include an option to “send an e-card” if you were making the donation a gift. Which was very basic, with only one image available. For this to be useful they would have needed to promote it up-front and give a better set of card presentation options. After this there was a standard confirmation screen which was shortly followed by a thank you email and receipt.

An update on last week’s donations: Youthline were quick to respond to me and assure me they were ironing out any kinks in their site – good stuff. I also received a paper-based receipt from them, which as always is unnecessary – oh well. Lifeline also contacted me to check my donation, as it was “an odd amount” – which was a result of my calculating 10% of my spending. That was good of them, but in future I think I’ll round the amount better so as not to raise any concerns and waste anyone’s time.

On 3 February 2010, he wrote on his Twitter page that his mother had died the day before, adding: “RIP mumxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.” Four days later he wrote that he had had an “awful week” but said “friends have been great”, adding: “now i have to some how pull myself together”.

McQueen is someone I had admired for years, but as well as his death being sad for the world of fashion and even more so for his friends and family – it highlights the issue of suicide. A tragedy we have a notably high rate of in New Zealand.

Doing some research to find a charity to donate to I came across New Zealand’s national suicide prevention strategy which is worth a read if you are interested. I also came across the Charities Commission site which has a reasonable level of information on all registered charities – including financial reports if you are interested in double-checking claims made on web sites. Oddly, the one dedicated suicide charity I could find didn’t even have a website.

In the end I opted to go with Lifeline and Youthline who both provide phone counselling to those in need.

Youthline

Youthline’s site was odd to say the least. They appear to be using a shopping cart system for donations which requires you to choose from a fixed donation amount and “add to cart” before checking out. Oh but wait (live blogging the process inadvertently) – you then have to register for an account and verify via an email link before you can login and pay via DPS. Not exactly the easiest process. It seems that you can also buy books and t-shirts and they’ve shoehorned donations into this process. A pity as I can see this being too much trouble for some potential donors.

And then to cap it off – the success page came back simply with “Scotts test” not a thank you. Then I receive an email telling me my “order status” has changed. Oh dear.

Lifeline were much smoother – using the flo2cash system I have encountered recently which presents a receipt after a single page donation form.

[ Update: Youthline were quick to respond to me and assure me they were ironing out any kinks in their site - good stuff. ]

To play us out – a live tribute by Patti Smith to McQueen below.