A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, Jehan, let me know that he and his mates had launched ripple, an online charity that uses the power of internet advertising to collect donations.

The way ripple works is that sponsors advertise with ripple, when someone views an ad from any of these sponsors, 100% of the donations go to charity. When Jehan first ran the idea past me, I was quite skeptical on two levels:

1. Who in the world would sit in front a computer and look at ads just to donate to charity?
2. Why would someone sponsor an ad, knowing fairly well that the views were not outcome based

To cut a long story short, the guys, pursued the idea and have been successful beyond belief. From what I hear, traffic stats are rapidly increasing and the site has even made it into the daily papers.

After building the I,Ripple facebook app, I understand why the concept is successful. The idea of being able to donate to a charity by viewing an ad is so easy. For the advertiser who supports ripple, their brand is literally burned into the mind of the donater (thanks wishlist.com.au, I can’t get you outta my head)

Despite the success, ripple still has some challenges ahead. It’ll be interesting to see how it all ends up.

UPDATE: The Best Facebook Applications blog just featured the I,Ripple Application.

LINKS:

The ripple website
The ripple blog

Donate to ripple by clicking the below buttons: