Gist: Putting advertising on Craigslist that donates money to charity is an option, but CEO Jim Buckmaster says the decision will rest with the user. A Facebook group by Kevin Fischer gathers support for such an action, and estimates that doing so would generate millions for charity to achieve Craigslist’s running goal of benefitting the greater good.
Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster apparently isn’t going crazy about profits, profits, profits. Buckmaster recently noted that Craigslist was “not trying to maximize revenue” and that they remain to have an advertising-free, fee-free (except for in the Jobs category) system. On CEO Jim Buckmaster’s own Craigslist bio page, he lists that he’s “possibly the only CEO ever described as anti-establishment, a communist, and a socialistic anarchist“.
On the same page, however, he notes that Craigslist wishes to continue achieving a “greater good” goal. Although Craigslist does not currently serve advertising, and they don’t intend to do so because “no users have been requesting we run text ads.”
However, there’s a new method of action for Craigslist to achieve the greater good: run ads and donate the proceeds to charity. One of their monetization streams, the purchase of Craigslist-themed merchandise from their store on e-tailer Zazzle, donates all of their proceeds to Craigslist’s 501(c)3 organization Craigslist Foundation. Using ads could be another method for benefiting the Craigslist Foundation or any other charity in general. When asked how an advertising system for Craigslist for the sole purpose of charity donation would be received by Craigslist, they put the spotlight to the users to see whether they “should raise revenue and plow it into charity.”
Biomedical entrepreneur Kevin Fischer started a Facebook group entitled “The Craigslist Revolution: click to join and raise ONE BILLION for charity!” He quotes rough calculations on the impact of advertising on Craigslist:
With 20 billion pageviews a month, a Google Adwords banner would bring in about 200 million dollars a year. Over five years that will be well over a billion dollars. If you decide to hire an employee to sell the ads instead of using Google, that money could double or triple or quintuple.
$200 million a year would be an astounding amount of money to be donated to one or distributed to multiple charities. In fact, the operation will undoubtedly generate multi-millions in revenue at the least, which still would be quite a large sum to donate. With the user experience not being impacted much by adding the advertisement, users may be sympathetic to the goal of raising money for charity. Fischer also suggests that ads can be hidden by users, so that they can continue their normal Craigslist experience.
A possible use of Google (GOOG) AdSense with an explanation of its aims (and that goes with Craigslist design) could be:
Another benefit is that Google AdSense works best with content to achieve contextually-targeted ads, and thus the advertising can be highly targeted (though advertising doesn’t necessarily need to be through Google, as Fischer stated, but rather could be through Craigslist’s own advertising system.) Advertisers should also be sympathetic towards Craigslist’s aims.
Fischer also started a social voting site for where Craigslist should donate revenues to on Slinkset (a Y Combinator startup).
Craigslist is an unorthodox company, and this is an unorthodox method of fundraising. However, it could result in massive revenues for charity that may benefit the targets of donation immensely.
Tags: advertising, charity, craigslist, facebook, philanthropy
