So, I've been unemployed for a while, but I had a stroke of brilliance. Why not start a charity?
My plan is thus.
I will take a box with a slit and advertise my charity. "Charity Vote".
People will, for as little as $1, get to make a donation, and, vote where the money will go.
At the end of the week, I will tally the donations and the votes. Whatever charity that receives the most votes will get all the donations for the week. Any ballots cast for the winner are then discarded. All ballots for the non-winning charity are kept, and used the next week. This will ensure that every charity should, over time, be able to win at least once.
How will it work?
How will I get paid: I will work a minimum of 44 hours a week. I will pay myself the equal of minimum wage, or, $451 a week. I will reduce this amount as needed so that it is less than 20% of the total donations received that week. Every 6 months, if I've been able to increase donations, I get an $11 a week raise. This is equal to $0.25 cents an hour, and is the raise that McDonalds gives, every 6 months, to employees that are doing their job well.
How will voting work: I will create a ballot with the top 5 or 10 charities in Ontario and people will mark and X and drop it in the box. I will leave a space for write-ins. If any write-in is very popular, I will add it to the ballot.
How will counting work: It might have been a bit confusing from above. Lets use an example. In week 1 I get 200 votes for the Canadian Cancer Society and 150 for the Canadian Red Cross. For week 1 all the donations will then go to the Canadian Cancer Society, and the 200 ballots for said charity are then discarded. Lets say week 2 has identical voting numbers. Remember that only the charity that has won gets it's ballots removed. Thus the week 2 totals are 200 for the Canadian Cancer Society but 300 for the Canadian Red Cross. This is done to ensure that the same single but popular charity does not win week after week.
Who can vote: Anyone who donates at least a dollar will be able to cast a ballot. Only one ballot per person may be cast each day. Each person only gets one ballot regardless of if they donate $1 or $100
The plan would be to star this ASAP. I have all the equipment I need right here in the apartment and could be out on the street on Monday. What I need first is some advice. What are the limits to what I can and can not do without incorporating as a legal charity?
I think you left out the most important part of your plan: how do you plan to get visibility/publicity for your charity? I imagine that's what you'll be doing for most of those 44 hours, but how? And how will you stand out from all the other charities? I have to say I don't see your idea as a "stroke of brilliance", but rather as a pretty bad idea, sorry. I'm sure raising even the $451 for your first week's salary will be a lot tougher than you expect.
How will I get paid: I will work a minimum of 44 hours a week.
Doing what, exactly? I don't think counting votes takes 44 hours a week.
I have to say that it just sounds like you want people to pay you $451 a week for doing next to nothing.
How will I get paid: I will work a minimum of 44 hours a week.
Doing what, exactly? I don't think counting votes takes 44 hours a week.
I have to say that it just sounds like you want people to pay you $451 a week for doing next to nothing.
I'm not sure where you get that from.
I'd start here at the University I live at. Take my box and my foldy TV-dinner table, stand in one of the crowded hallway areas, and sell.
"Donate to Charity, any charity" "Vote for the charity you like best" etc
Edit - Since I'm mobile, I could take my box elsewhere, perhaps just stand on a street corner. I could try going door to door. Solicit for online donations. There are lots of options for how to get donations. Ideally I go to some place physically, so that I can "close" in public. That is where I open the box, count the money, count the votes, and bring the money to the bank. Ideally I do that in public so that nobody can accuse me of just pocketing it all. I'll suggest a $5 donation, but take $2. The "average" donation, I hope, would be $3.50 and if I get 100 of those a day, I can bring in $2,450 total, of which 20% is $490. I'd say raising $2000 a week for charity is a good goal for a person to have.
Best case scenario, it works so well, that I branch out, and within a few years, someone working for Charity Vote will be knocking on your door.
Worse case scenario, I make $100 all week. Take $20 for myself that I didn't have before, give $80 to the winning charity, and walk away from the whole venture knowing "okay, so that dosn't work"
Why wouldn't I just donate to Charity X's website, taking out the middle man?
That's a quite good question, especially since that other charity is going to take their cut as well. The more links there are in the chain, the less money goes to actually helping the needy.
Why wouldn't I just donate to Charity X's website, taking out the middle man?
That's a quite good question, especially since that other charity is going to take their cut as well. The more links there are in the chain, the less money goes to actually helping the needy.
I'm right in front of you asking for money. That's the difference.
Why wouldn't I just donate to Charity X's website, taking out the middle man?
That's a quite good question, especially since that other charity is going to take their cut as well. The more links there are in the chain, the less money goes to actually helping the needy.
I'm right in front of you asking for money. That's the difference.
you must be very handsome if that's the difference.
TAS i'm interested:
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fighting games with speed goals in general
I'm sciencing as fast as I can !
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<adelikat> once more balls enter the picture, everything gets a lot more entertraining
<adelikat> mmmmm yummy penises
please go ahead with this, I want to know how it goes
I'm glad SOMEbody thinks I should go ahead, lol.
I think that most of the others here seem to forget that a minimum of 80% will go to charity. Even if someone only donates $1, that's still 80 cents that the needy did not have before I started this.
I think that most of the others here seem to forget that a minimum of 80% will go to charity. Even if someone only donates $1, that's still 80 cents that the needy did not have before I started this.
You have not still explained why it's better to donate 20 cents to you and 80 cents to the charity rather than donating the full dollar to said charity.
So why don't you want to just find a job where you actually produce something, again?
I have a disability that is just bad enough that it makes it very difficult for me to get a job, but not so bad that the government thinks I should get assistance.
Warp wrote:
TheNewTeddy wrote:
I think that most of the others here seem to forget that a minimum of 80% will go to charity. Even if someone only donates $1, that's still 80 cents that the needy did not have before I started this.
You have not still explained why it's better to donate 20 cents to you and 80 cents to the charity rather than donating the full dollar to said charity.
I never said it was better.
edit
Last week, I was stopped by somebody asking for money for basketball for poor kids.
Last month I was stopped by somebody asking for money to send poor kids on a trip or something.
Once a month there are people standing on the corner asking for money for world vision or something similar.
Just a few days ago people knocked on my door asking for money for some other kind of program.
My grocery store will often ask for $2 for this or that cause.
Why should I give money to any of them? Simple. They are there. The only charity I've donated to regularly was the Canadian Cancer Society. If I were to give money to a charity, I'd give it there, but they are not in front of me with their hand out. Am I really going to say to one of these people "naw, I'll give to Cancer" then go home, and for no reason other than I said I would, log on, and give?
People are, from time to time, willing to part with a little money for the simple fact that you are there. This is how charities make money. If people were unwilling to do so, nobody would even bother going door to door to stopping you on the corner.
It's really not an insane idea, I'm just mimicking what others have successfully done.
I have a disability that is just bad enough that it makes it very difficult for me to get a job, but not so bad that the government thinks I should get assistance.
Your disability mainly impairs socialization and subjective appraisal, but there are many jobs that don't require much or at all, certainly less than running a charity anyway. Have you considered, say, being a librarian or a statistician?
TheNewTeddy wrote:
I'm just mimicking what others have successfully done.
I expect that the successful others didn't have your disability, so you won't even be able to tell if you're missing something in your mimicry. Mimicking something without understanding why it works and why it may not work for you is not a good idea in general.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I assume that you have also considered all the practical hurdles with this project.
You have to find out the legal status of this kind of business, as well as the exact limits of what is and isn't allowed. In many countries doing this kind of business requires creating a registered association. (While this probably varies wildly from country to country, for example here it's difficult to do anything that involves receiving income, or even just handling significant quantities of money, without being required to create a registered association. Such an association requires several legal duties, such as accounting/bookkeeping, annual general meetings, and so on.) Even if it doesn't in your country, you still will have to have some kind of official bookkeeping for taxing purposes and so on.
Then it would probably be a good idea to contact all the charity organizations you will be dealing with. Most use registered trademarks and they might or might not agree to allow you to use their name in any kind of context (even if it's simply to show a list of votes; even if one single such organization denies you the right to use their name in any context, it will make difficult to show people eg. top lists or statistics; this can be problematic if people ask you for such lists). After all, you wouldn't want the organization's lawyers sending you questions about why you are using their name to make business even though you are not associated with them.
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