Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing programmes give a share of advertising revenues to charities which take part. Whisper uses Google Ad Grants, Google’s free Adwords programme for charities. The rules for Google Ad Grants prevent Whisper from advertising these programmes on Whisper’s website. Advertising them on social media should be OK.
Cashback schemes
Section titled “Cashback schemes”Shopping cashback schemes are popular with schools and small charities, allowing their supporters to donate cashback (referral commissions) from web shopping. A well-promoted scheme can generate several hundred pounds a year. Charities need to register with the individual sites to be able to receive cashback. Cashback is not regarded by HMRC as the buyer’s taxable income, so Gift Aid is unavailable1. One site which offered the choice of keeping cashback or giving it to charity found that 20 times more people wanted to keep it than wanted to give it to charity2.
Cashback sites compared: the best pay out twice the worst
| Website | Cashback payout | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| https://www.topcashback.co.uk|100%+|You have a choice of keeping the cashback yourself or donating to charity. Pays £12.50 for referring people to sign up. | ||
| http:*www.froggybank.co.uk\|100%\| You have a choice of keeping the cashback yourself or donating to charity.| ^https:*affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk | 100% | 5%-10% of purchase price on amazon.co.uk, including e-books. |
| https:www.thegivingmachine.co.uk\|75%\|**Whisper is registered with this site.* Includes cashback for some Ebay departments.| ^https:*www.easyfundraising.org.uk | 50% | |
| https://www.giveasyoulive.com | 50% | Whisper is registered with this site. |
Charity search engines
Section titled “Charity search engines”Some search sites act as front ends for Microsoft’s Bing search engine or for Yahoo! Search, which in turn uses Bing. They will share some of the advertising revenue with charities that register with them. The amount raised is about 0.5p per search.
Charity search engines compared
| Search engine | Website | Payout | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| easysearch | http://www.easysearch.org.uk | ? | Uses Yandex |