The income from donations goes to keeping Vizzed online for the hundreds of users. I really doubt that there is any possible way that Vizzed could get enough donations to do that and donate to a cancer drive.

And honestly? There's enough people donating to a hopeless cause.
And FYI: It's hopeless because there are known methods of controlling or killing cancer while not harming the patient as much as chemo but the government refuses to research it.

If we want to donate to a Cancer society, wouldn't it make more sense to get rid of the middle man, and just give it to them?

Agreed. I don't see why the money would go through Vizzed to a cancer research facility. I think it would make more sense to give it directly to them.

legacyme3 : It would, but how do we know who 'they' are? We can't just pick out some random cancer patient and drop some money on them in hopes they will use it to help find a cure for themselves. The ACS sees to it that the money goes to where it should be going, and being such a large organization, there is little concern that they would commit fraud.

Ktanaqui : Even if it took longer than a month, it would still be nice to keep a charity pool from a fraction of the Vizzed donations, as every bit counts when it is for a good cause. Also, I could see our government doing such a thing, and I have never heard of these 'known' methods, but I would be interested in learning about them. There are always going to be new ways of curing diseases that will be found, and I don't see the government being able to put a lid on every single breakthrough. I can think of many instances where funding research has produced outstanding results, and if it weren't for that very funding, we would not have half of the medical technology we have today.

Besides, even if we decided to do a charity other than cancer, it would still be nice to do something good for those less fortunate than ourselves, and hopefully that would cause more people to want to donate to Vizzed. So in the long run, there may end up being more donations each month than usual, even after taking out a portion for a charity pool. For example, what led me to this idea in the first place was that I donated half my paycheck to a local food drive last month. I wanted to donate to Vizzed, but that just seemed to outweigh the importance. However, if Vizzed would have been running some sort of drive, that half a paycheck would have went here instead.

GuardianZack :

10 years ago you have a point, because the internet is much more barren than it is now.

But in this day and age, a quick google check followed by a nice thorough back check results in getting things where they want to go.

My point still stands.

"If we want to donate to a cancer society, why not just cut through the middle man?"

legacyme3 : I agree with you, but the primary concern I would have is that without a middle-man, you have no way of knowing
where and if the funds got donated. Although, David being as religious as he is, I wouldn't see him doing anything shady. That still doesn't mean others may know him well enough to trust. People will be more likely to donate when you are able to provide valid proof that the money is going to charity, and a middle-man generally gives people that peace of mind.

Technicalities aside, if we could find a method of Vizzed fundraising that everyone agreed upon, would you be on board?

GuardianZack :

I wouldn't be "opposed" to it, but I can't find how it really helps Vizzed, and I also think the majority of people who are informed enough to know what they are donating to would know where to donate "without" the middle man.

legacyme3 : Even if it doesn't help Vizzed, it still would be nice if we could donate to charity as a community. However, I think it would benefit us, because if part of our donations go to charity there may be people more likely to donate. That would mean Vizzed could potentially be getting more donations overall even after the charity funds are subtracted. As I said earlier, I donate when I can to charity and to developers of websites that I see have potential. If we had a charity pool, then this site would be killing both of those birds with the same stone, and I would have donated last month to Vizzed instead of a local food drive. In general, I am trying to say that knowing some of the donations going to Vizzed also go to help the less fortunate, people may find more incentive to give. This could in turn increase the overall donations to the site each month.

GuardianZack : I think what legacy is getting at though is this: So you're saying you spent half your check on a food drive but if you had been able to donate to vizzed and have that donation go partially to a charity you would have done that instead,  but realistically you could have given 1/4th your pay check to vizzed 1/4th your pay check to charity and this would essentially be EXACTLY what you wanted.
 
I can guarantee you that Davideo7 would NOT be able to maintain this website through just the donations he receives alone. Maintaining a site like this can be pricey for all of the bandwidth. I doubt there is much room to be losing donation money, even if you feel it would bring in more money since you think more people would donate, I think realistically thats how it would be in a perfect world, but the world is not perfect and I don't think that it would cause a very noticeable influx of donations.

It's definitely a nice idea but I just don't think vizzed is big enough that it can be funneling money out of it like that. Maybe if the site was more on a scale like facebook with that many millions of users it would be more feasible, but the way it is , the amount of money being donated by members is probably negligible compared to the cost of the site.

Yes I do realize that the site earns most of its money through advertisements, but without those this site would not be able to stay afloat.

All in all I think its best what legacyme3 has said, why not just donate directly to said charity's and maybe split your funds so you can still donate a little to vizzed also! You could even change this post instead of saying partial donations to vizzed will go to charity , you could simply make a post on vizzed informing people why it is good to donate to charitys and maybe that the American cancer society would be a very good charity to donate to, and possibly direct people where they could donate directly to said charity (as long as it's within the forum rules to be advertising said website)

LegolasJJH : Actually, the way you put it, I see the point. Vizzed isn't as large a site as I would like it to be, I often forget. Taking that into consideration, even if more people had incentive to donate, it still wouldn't be enough to make a difference. I also realize that there are many times when David must pay the remainder of the server costs, so there is no profit in it for him. So yeah, there would likely not be a very large increase of donators to Vizzed, and the site needs what donations it does get.

About the paycheck thing, I feel rather stupid now, because I honestly didn't think of that lol.

As far as directing users to places they could donate to charity goes, that would be leading possible donations to Vizzed away from the site, so I don't think that would be the best of ideas. It was a nice suggestion, but it wouldn't work out well. Better off just closing the thread.

Local Moderators : Please close this thread.

Ktanaqui :

Someone once said this to me. "There is no money in a cure. There is only money in treatments." The health field is more inclined to work on treatments than on cures.


That said, thread maker requested close, so closed it shall be.

---Closed---

It looks to me like BNuge forgot to actually close this. Oh well, good thing I'm around to do it for him.

So yeah, Creator requested it, so it is now

~CLOSED~