GoDaddy Success Benefits Charity

CEO and founder, Bob Parsons was recently quoted as saying that Godaddy is “committed to making a difference in the community.” A recent donation to the YMCA demonstrates this commitment. When approached with a request for a meager donation of $1,000, the company raised the bar with a more liberal offer–$50,000. Domaining companies take note!

Go Daddy has an estimated 6.6m customers and 35m domains to manage. The recently named “Best of the Best” business (by Ranking Arizona) also appears to be immune to the effects of the recession. With expansions including 345 people being hired this year, and an estimated 125 open positions—Go Daddy is bucking the trend.

Speaking of Godaddy, they just announced the support of .MX domains. “We realize many of our customers will want a dot-MX domain,” said Bob Parsons. “We plan to help them get it the same way we do everything at Go Daddy — easily and affordably.” This current pre-registration is set to end on July 31, though general registration starts Sept 1.

Source: WebhostDir

Name.Com Gives To Charity – Verizon Wins $33M

As an entrepreneur and someone who donates to a wide variety of charities, I can’t help but notice when companies do things that are right. In fact, I go out of my way to support such companies, which is why I’m posting this.

Name.com just had a promotion where $.50 from every .ORG registered until 12/31/08 was donated to Kiva.org.  On top of that, they were selling .orgs for a crazy $6.49 – which means you should buy them anyway. In case you didn’t know, Kiva lends money to entrepreneurs in the developing world, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s the “teach the man to fish” approach using micro-transactions.

Earlier today I came across another headline – Verizon Wins $33 Million in Suit Over Domain Names. Apparently, “the default judgment of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by the Internet company, OnlineNic, was issued last Friday by United States District Judge Jeremy D. Fogel in San Jose, Calif. Judge Fogel froze OnlineNic’s assets and ordered the transfer to Verizon of all identical or confusingly similar addresses. Verizon sought as much as $66.3 million in damages over names that included myverizonwireless.com, iphoneverizonplans.com and verizon-cellular.com.”

So, it got me thinking. What about donating a large chunk of that to charity? Of course I don’t know how much of the $33M will go in legal expenses. The point is (assuming they get the money) that Verizon have scored $33M. What about doing something good with a % of that?

Sedo Cares? Gives HALF the funds to charity!

If I asked you to tell me the first things that come to mind when I say “Sedo” – what would you say? I might be completely wrong, but I’m guessing the word “cares” wouldn’t be one of them.

This morning I received an email titled “Wishing Well Promotion:: Win Cash and Promote Change!“. At first I thought spam, then I thought “promote change” – that sounds like CNN’s “be the change” promo…. so I opened the email from Sedo.

At the top of the email was a picture of the world, a large green leaf and a little African child. Wow, the marketing guys really picked one issue from each category for this promo! It looks like something from an NGO like WorldVision.

So what’s the bottom line? Well, if you spend 1,000 USD/EUR/GBP or more, Sedo puts $10 into a bucket (Wishing Well). At the end of the month half of the money in the “Wishing Well” is given to CHF International “in response to the drought occurring in Ethiopia“. The other half will be given at random to a buyer or seller who closed a transaction through Sedo during the month of August. What the? Am I living in the twilight zone here? What we have is – drought in Ethiopia vs large latte at Starbucks. Hmmmm… Some people might find this hard to believe, so here is their landing page for the promotion with all the info.

So let me get the straight – domainers buy stuff from Sedo for $1k and Sedo gives $5 to charity and the other $5 to a domainer. Great concept around the charity, but very BAD execution. It should be a competition OR a charity.

Here is an extract from CHF International which explains how much $$ is required:

• $300 provides a family with proper sanitation;
• $600 provides a year’s supply of food and water for one growing child;
• $1,000 repairs an existing well that will provide 400 people with clean water;
• $7,000 builds a new well, which could save the lives of 800 people;
• $12,000 builds a new school building, providing children with valuable education.“

Sedo, why don’t you donate 100% of the funds to the charity? $5 is nothing to a domainer. If you really cared, you would give it all to charity.

Don’t get me wrong – conceptually this is a great idea. I believe that Western countries and wealthy individuals have an obligation to give something back to society. I personally donate to several charities on a monthly basis.

Sedo should be congratulated on making the first step as they didn’t have to do it. There is now an opportunity to get it right and set an example to the rest of the industry.