Case Study: Google's Chrome for a Cause
Google started a project called "Chrome for a Cause," in which every person who uses its Chrome browser, with the added "Chrome for Cause" extension, will generate a small donation for each tab that they open on their browser. At the end of the day, based on how many tabs a person opens, they will get to donate to a charity of their choice. People opened more than 60 million tabs from December 15 to 19, raising $1 million on behalf of Google's partner charities. The five charities included The Nature Conservacy, charity:water, Doctors Without Borders, Un Techo para me Pais (which constructs transitional housing for impoverished families), and Room to Read.
To boost awareness of Google Chrome browser, by supporting an interactive cause.
Users installed the "Chrome for a Cause" extension from the Chrome browser (which doesn't cost anything). Then, the user opened tabs, and at the end of the day, they get to choose which charity they'd like to contribute to. There was a maximum of 250 tabs that a person could credit toward charity per day, and only one tab would count per second to go to the users cause.
The tab currency included:
- 10 tabs = 1 tree planted
- 10 tabs = 1 book published and donated
- 25 tabs = 1 vaccination treatment provided
- 100 tabs = 1 square foot of shelter built
- 200 tabs = 1 person's clean water for a year
So if a person opened 200 tabs, and decided to donate to the charity:water organization, that would be enough money to give 1 person clean water for a year.
Google also included links to donate directly to the charities, bringing awareness to the individual charities and what they do as well.
Google promised to donate up to $1 million, as divvied up by user selection. Users raised 60,599,541 tabs for charity with $245,278 going toward planting trees, $232,791 used to provide clean water to people in developing nations, $112,078 going toward shelters in Latin America, $267,336 helping administer vaccinations against meningitis, and $142, 518 is going toward publishing books by local writers and illustrators in Asia and Africa.
In the figure above, it shows the breakdown of all the tabs opened and where the money went.
Published by The Fundraising Journal 2011
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