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Personally, as an atheist I am offended by the language on HBI's website, particularly things like: "Heartbeat's Life-Saving Vision is to help rebuild cultures worldwide that welcome every new life and nurture children within strong families, according to God's Plan"

I cannot support such a blatantly evangelical organization. HBI is obviously intent on spreading Christianity throughout the world. Since SearchKindly has not come out with an officially pro-Christian stance, I don't think it's fair to the many, many non-Christians in the SKarmy to include HBI on the list of possible recipients.

Dylan from LA
Friday, June 8, 2007 at 6:06:37 PM

I agree with what Anon from TX was implying -- HBI does not deserve SearchKindly's money because they are obviously a (conservative Christian) political organization, not a charity. Based on the 1% jump in the results that just occurred when I voted for the second-place charity behind HBI(prompted by Anon from TX's comment), it's clear that very few votes have been cast so far. It's quite probable that only 1 or 2 people are regularly voting in favor of HBI every 8 hours and heavily skewing the results.

In light of the present situation, I'd like to suggest an improvement to the voting system. I think that we should be able to rank the charities, rather than being limited to choosing a single charity. The ranking system would work like this:

You must rank at least 1 charity, but you are not required to rank more than 1. Thus, if you only like one of the charities on the list, then you would only put a "1" next to that charity. If you like a few of the charities, then you would rank them in order, putting a "1", "2" and "3" next to those charities. If there is a charity you do not like and would not want to see any money go toward, then you would not vote for them (and thus not rank them).

There have been many studies showing that voting systems of this kind will result in higher satisfaction with elections results than using the simple plurality. A variant of this voting system, called Instant Run-Off Voting is gaining traction in the US and was recently introduced in the city of San Francisco. If you're not following this based on my admittedly poor description, please look up Instant-runoff voting in Wikipedia and you'll find all the details on how the system works there.

If that sounds too complicated, then another alternative is to do it Digg style where you can digg or undigg a charity. I would certainly like the ability to undigg HBI because I'd be very unhappy if they were to end up receiving the July donation.

Anon from CA
Friday, June 8, 2007 at 6:06:15 PM

I don't want to start a big debate here, but I do ask folks to read the public policies that are being supported/non supported by HBI...do you know entirely what you are voting to support/fund??

Anon from TX
Friday, June 8, 2007 at 1:01:21 PM

I've come across this site a few days ago, and I love the idea. I believe we could take the idea further by creating a "charity browser". I'm thinking of a web page that contains a frameset of 3 rows, where the middle frame contains any web site the user would like to visit, and the upper and bottom frames contain ads. The ads would be relevant to the website in the middle, and this means--CMIIW--better revenue (and less default ads). Such a thing can be easily integrated in browsers such as Firefox and IE.
Another improvement would be to use other ad formats (pop ups, layer ads, interstitials, etc.) and let the user set the frequency of those ad formats (or, if he wishes, to turn them off completely). (The addition of video ads is nice, but is kind of unrelated to the concept of SearchKindly. Also, in order to rank the video I must go to their website and login, but the sign-up e-mail verification always fails for me. No idea what's wrong.)
AFAIK, those ad formats generate much more revenue than the classic CPC and CPM, so they're worth it even though they're very annoying for the user (and thus the need for letting the user himself control them). What do you think?

--Itay, I'm guessing that you are something of a coder? Either way, can you contact me directly (either through the form or syed at searchkindly.org) so I can get a better understanding of how something like this could get developed? I think there is definitely some potential to this idea, though we might be at odds with our current ad networks terms of service. But that doesn't mean that this isn't worthy of some exploration. Thanks--Syed

Itay from Israel
Wednesday, June 6, 2007 at 3:03:55 AM

What about getting some money from Walmart one month?...They do community grants every quarter, and every Walmart has their own grants to give out...just hop Walmart to Walmart...you stop by a Walmart and ask for a community grant form, fill it out, and bring it back to the appropriate person at that store, face to face...then follow-up...follow-up...follow-up...the grants are often $250-$500, made directly out to non profit organization. Check out this for more info, and also ask your local store's customer service. Just word the application/attached letter with application stressing receiving the grant will help the local community, as well as the community at large...you also have to prove it's non profit/501 c3/tax exempt #/etc. I recently applied locally for a grant for a national 501c3 and got it. It is possible.

Gail from Austin
Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 12:12:34 PM

I sent emails to Oprah and Ellen Degeneres, but there are a few others people could try, like Ricky (sp?) and Montel Williams. Other places we should try are radio stations, especially public radio, since they are always looking for things to talk about.

Matt from CT
Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 8:08:45 AM

Also, I forgot radio stations! We would need a public service announcement to get on there, but it might be very worth it.

Matt from CT
Sunday, June 3, 2007 at 10:10:04 AM

I just sent an email to Oprah's site, but I don't think one email will be enough to get their attention. I'm sort of busy so I can't send dozens of these messages, but here are a couple of other ideas: Montel Williams Ricky (sp), the woman with the talk show in the afternoon Ellen Degeneres Talk shows in general really. Lastly, maybe someone with the skills could write PR (public relations) reports which could then be sent to new stations/ associated press. Not sure if we are doing this or not yet.

Matt from CT
Sunday, June 3, 2007 at 10:10:52 AM

What about asking the charities we have helped already to mention us in their next newsletter or on their website somewhere....

--I've been doing that for most of the charities, but I should probably start hounding them a little harder. I should also probably list contact information for each charity, just in case anyone out there wants to help give the charities a little nudge on our behalf.--Syed

Gail from Austin
Saturday, June 2, 2007 at 6:06:08 PM

Maybe the SK army should be e-mailing these celebrities and such and requesting they check out what WE as a group are tyring to accomplish. That would probably hold more weight than the founder of the group contacting them.

--THAT is an Awesome idea ;)--Syed

ME from Missouri
Saturday, June 2, 2007 at 4:04:43 PM

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