A positive ripple effects from a few assumes

A ripple effect is often used to describe a situation where an effect from an initial state can be followed outwards incrementally. These effects can be either negative or positive and occur quite frequently in society and yes, the Internet.

But let’s switch it up for a few seconds – We use search engines (like Google) to look for things on the web (news, entertainment, products, information, etc.).

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Alright, so imagine combining the two and creating a search engine that creates a positive and socially conscious ripple effect.

Well on May 4th 2007, 4 friends from Australia (Jehan Ratnatunga, Simon Griffiths, Matt Tilleard and Mack Nevill) did just that.

Together they decided to use Google’s built in search engine (Google Co-op) to build a non-profit website that harnesses the power of the Internet, leverages affiliate advertising to generate revenue, and use that money to help people, instead of pocketing it for themselves. Selfless? Read on.

Collectively creating Ripple.org

Ripple.org Homepage

From what I’ve described about it so far, it may seem like a mouthful, but the actual concept is extremely simple.

Upon landing on the website, you are presented with 4 charities you’d like Ripple to donate to –

● Water (WaterAid)

● Food (Oxfam)

● Education (Oaktree)

● Money (Grameen Foundation).

When you click on a panel, you are shown an advertisement from one of Ripple. org’s sponsors, who pay them each time their ads are viewed.

Once they receive it, the Ripple.org team passes on 100% of the proceeds to their carefully chosen charities.

You can also use the site to search for whatever it is that you would normally use Google (or any other search engine) to normally look for.

So what’s “our” impact?

Rewind to what I was talking about earlier in relation to the ripple effect.

Choose a cause or simply search the Internet using Ripple.org and any money generated from either of the two processes go to the cause you chose previously. This causes a desired positive ripple effect.

If each advert generates anywhere from 1¢ to 20¢ and you have a community of 100,000 people using Ripple.org, an average 3 times a week, it would potentially generate over $1.5 million a year.

Now imagine Ripple.org had the same amount of people using it as My Space does. Using the same projection figures, together we’d be raising $2 billion dollars a year for charity.

That’s not a ripple anymore. It’s one giant wave!

How can you get involved?

Start off by setting Ripple.org as your default home page. Then every time you use the Internet to search for anything, you can either click on a cause and view the advert or use the search bar to find what you’re looking for. Or do both and double up on your giving!

You can also search to fight poverty straight from your browser by installing the Ripple.org Search bar

For the more tech-savvy out there, Ripple.org has a range of goodies from an i Google gadget, a Google Chrome extension and buttons linking directly to the “Give” pages. You can get them all on Ripple.org here.

In the end, I feel that the concept of a click to donate idea or using affiliate ad revenue to fund non-profits isn’t something new. However, donating ALL of that money to charity is not only rare, it’s pretty phenomenal.

Thank you Ripple.org for helping us to create a small but very positive wave on the world doing what we do on a daily basis – searching the World Wide Web.

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