Archive for the ‘Our Concept’ Category

Have you vis­ited our part­ner char­i­ties’ shop­ping pages lately? We’ve grown to well over 100 online stores. It’s got­ten so that we can hon­estly say that if we don’t have it, you don’t need it. Many of the stores that we offer are com­pa­nies that you’ve bought from for years, either online or in their “brick and mor­tar” stores located in shop­ping cen­ters and malls.

So why should you shop online here at “Sho­pOn­line” with stores like Wal­mart or Best Buy or Men’s Wear­house or Sally Beauty Sup­ply or…? Well, you get the idea. We offer a lot of stores that might be right down the street from you. So why buy from their online site instead of just pop­ping into their store?

There are sev­eral good answers to that ques­tions. The most obvi­ous from the stand­point of Sho­pOn­line is that when you buy from the store, they don’t pay a com­mis­sion to the char­ity of your choice. This site exists to gen­er­ate com­mis­sions from online shop­ping for char­i­ties. You’ll pay no more for hav­ing shopped online, but your char­ity will receive a com­mis­sion on all of your pur­chases from this site.

The sec­ond rea­son is that you can often find the same prod­uct cheaper online than from the same vendor’s brick and mor­tar stores. The cost of doing busi­ness is less online, so the retail­ers can often offer bet­ter prices to online cus­tomers. I’ve read lots of let­ters to the edi­tor of com­puter mag­a­zines say­ing that they have shopped online at (fill in the name of a store that sells con­sumer elec­tron­ics prod­ucts here) for a com­puter or a cable or what­ever, and then gone to the phys­i­cal store to buy the item, only to find that it is con­sid­er­ably more expen­sive in the store than on the store’s web­site. The leader of one of the orga­ni­za­tions sup­ported by Sho­pOn­line told us that when he was in the mar­ket for an auto part this sum­mer, he found it online for almost half what it cost in the parts store. So shop­ping online can save you money, even if you have to pay for ship­ping (which a lot of times you don’t). Com­par­i­son shop at your charity’s shop­ping page before you buy some­thing at a store.

The next rea­son is that there is a greater selec­tion of prod­ucts online. I have a Super Wal­mart just a cou­ple of miles from me and it is crammed full of “stuff,” but they don’t have as much “stuff” as Walmart.com (one of our retail part­ners here on Sho­pOn­line) offers on their web­site. Walmart.com has more than one mil­lion prod­ucts for sale on their site — far more than they could stock at a local store. Their web­site doesn’t have every­thing that the store has (for instance, you can’t buy many gro­cery items online), but they have lit­er­ally tens of thou­sands of other prod­ucts avail­able online that they don’t stock in their stores. Walmart.com isn’t the only store this is true of. Any of our online retail part­ners carry more prod­ucts on their web­sites than they stock in their stores. So shop for hard-to-find items on your charity’s shop­ping page. You might be sur­prised at what you can find.

The last rea­son I’m going to lay out for you can save you a lot of money. Local stores might have a small sec­tion of close­out mer­chan­dise, but many of their web­sites have a ton of deeply dis­counted close­outs. I’ve bought some brand new mer­chan­dise for pen­nies on the dol­lar in the close­out sec­tions of some of the retail­ers fea­tured on Sho­pOn­line — and every time I did, not only did I save a pile of money, I also earned a com­mis­sion for one of our charitypartners.

I used to work in a com­puter store near Chicago. Many, many times I would give a great prod­uct demon­stra­tion and sales pitch to a cus­tomer, only to lose him to a dif­fer­ent store that sold the same thing cheaper than we did. We called those peo­ple SHABEs — Shop Here And Buy Else­where. I encour­age you to become a SHABE (to some extent). Browse the aisles at local stores, then come back to Sho­pOn­line and com­par­i­son shop the same prod­ucts from the same store’s online sites. (I do not rec­om­mend you take the time and build up the hopes of a com­mis­sioned sales­per­son at a store only to order online to save some bucks. If some­one gives you great ser­vice and depend on a sales com­mis­sion for all or part of their income, do the right thing and buy from that person.)

Sho­pOn­line can be a pow­er­ful tool for rais­ing money for your char­ity. I works every time you use it. Buy­ing from the online sites of some of your favorite retail stores can help your char­i­ty­fi­nan­cially. Book­mark your charity’s shop­ping page and check it first for all of your shop­ping needs — those things that you have always bought online, and a sur­pris­ing array of things that you’ve never thought of shop­ping online for before.

I got an ad from my Web site host­ing ser­vice recently offer­ing to sell me an add-on pack­age that they claimed would improve the secu­rity of my Web site and would pro­tect my vis­i­tors’ per­sonal data. I turned them down. Here’s why.

Did you notice that nowhere on this site do we ask you to reg­is­ter, or log in, or use a pass­word? Nowhere do we ask you for any per­sonal infor­ma­tion. When you click on one of our ads, the online retail­ers will ask you for per­sonal data (kinda makes it hard to sell you some­thing and ship it to you with­out the per­sonal data), but you aren’t on this Web site at that point — you’re on the retailer’s site.

Shop­ping here is totally anony­mous. There is noth­ing built into this site to enable me to know who any of my vis­i­tors are, hence no need for “secu­rity soft­ware.” There’s noth­ing here to pro­tect. The only thing that gets tracked here is which page on this site did each sale orig­i­nate from. That enables me to accu­rately track how much com­mis­sion goes to each of the char­i­ties that has a shop­ping page on this site.

I’ve made the point before that I am not a “mid­dle­man” in your trans­ac­tions with our online retail part­ners — not in any way, shape, or form. I don’t mark-up the prices of the goods and ser­vices you buy from our online retail­ers. (In fact, you are more than wel­come to use any coupon codes or spe­cial offers to get the absolute best price you can from any of our retail­ers.) I’m not involved in tak­ing your orders, main­tain­ing inven­tory, ship­ping your mer­chan­dise, or any other aspect of the sales process. My job is merely to intro­duce shop­pers to sell­ers, and then politely step out of the pic­ture and let you do busi­ness with each other.

And when you do, the retail­ers send me a com­mis­sion, which I split 50–50 with the char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion from whose page you started your shop­ping adventure.

It’s a thing of sim­ple beauty and is part of the rea­son that we are able to give such a high rebate per­cent­age to each of our part­ner charities.

So shop here with con­fi­dence, and in the immor­tal words of chef Julia Child, “Don’t be afraid!”

Let’s face it — there isn’t much “fun” in fundrais­ing. Not for any­one. Let me count the ways:

• It’s not fun for the per­son who has to ask their friends and fam­ily for money.
• It’s just not pos­si­ble for a lot of peo­ple to give “above and beyond” what they are already donat­ing right now.
• It’s not fun to be asked to buy over­priced prod­ucts that you don’t really want or need.
• Fundrais­ing can strain your finances and your relationships.
• Fundrais­ing projects that sell prod­ucts don’t have a very broad range of mer­chan­dise to choose from.
• Fundrais­ing cus­tomers are usu­ally required to pay up front, some­time wait for weeks to receive what they ordered, and have  lim­ited recourse if they are unhappy with the prod­uct once it’s received.
• And when the fundrais­ing event is (finally!) over, so is the rev­enue stream.

Let me show you a more excel­lent way — a way that puts the “fun” back into fundraising.

When your char­ity or non-profit orga­ni­za­tion becomes a Char­ity Part­ner of ShopOnline4Charity.org, you can intro­duce your mem­bers (and their net­works of friends and fam­ily) to a fundrais­ing oppor­tu­nity that over­comes all of the neg­a­tive aspects of fundrais­ing listed above.

We offer vis­i­tors to this site a huge selec­tion of prod­ucts and ser­vices from a grow­ing num­ber of online Retail Part­ners — some that you’ve known and trusted for years, oth­ers that are new to you and ready to be dis­cov­ered. Because vis­i­tors can shop from their favorite online retail­ers, there’s no pres­sure to spend money they don’t have for prod­ucts they don’t want from ven­dors they wouldn’t buy from oth­er­wise. And they don’t pay a sin­gle penny more than if they had gone to the Web retailer’s site directly. Besides that, this is a fundraiser that doesn’t end. As long as we’re here (and we plan on being here for a very long time), we’ll be open for busi­ness. And best of all, 50% of all our com­mis­sions will be shared with your charity.

If your char­ity is already on-board with ShopOnline4Charity.org, thank you. You may begin shop­ping to raise funds for your group. If your orga­ni­za­tion is vis­it­ing to check us out, feel free to kick the tires, click on one of our exist­ing Char­ity Part­ner links to visit some of our Retail Part­ners’ sites, and maybe do a lit­tle shop­ping while you’re here. To con­tact us about includ­ing your orga­ni­za­tion on our site, email us at Phil@ShopOnline4Charity.org.

And now abides faith, hope, char­ity, these three; but the great­est of these is char­ity.

— 1 Corinthi­ans 13:13

ShopOnline4Charity.org is really easy to use:

• Select the char­ity or orga­ni­za­tion that you want to help sup­port by click­ing on either the Char­ity Part­ners but­ton at the top of this page or the Char­i­ties list­ing in the left side­bar
  
• Shop at online stores by click­ing on the ads on the charity’s page
• Place your order directly with the online retailer
• We share half of our com­mis­sion with your char­ity
  

Remem­ber to do all your online shop­ping from the ads on your charity’s page. Book­mark this page now to make it easy for you to remem­ber to come back to this site as a por­tal for all your online shop­ping needs. Come back often, as we are adding new online retail­ers on a reg­u­lar basis.