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A search engine hopes to raise at least $1 million for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals through 2009 in an effort to help animal shelters deal with increasing homeless animal populations and declining charitable donations spurred by housing and economic woes.
Foreclosures and other economic issues may be causing more animals to be relinquished to shelters , fewer animals to be adopted, and a decline in donations to shelters, said Stacy Ybarra, senior director of corporate giving for Bellevue, Wash.-based InfoSpace Inc.
DogPile.com, InfoSpace’s flagship business, plans to donate a set but undisclosed percentage of revenues from its Internet search operations to the ASPCA.
Essentially, the wryly named Search & Rescue program will donate money each time a sponsored site from a DogPile search is clicked on by a search engine user. DogPile, which utilizes 12 search engines including Google and Yahoo, earns its revenues when sponsored sites are selected, and has established a percentage of those revenues for the program.
DogPile hopes to raise at least $1 million for the charity through the program, but would love to raise double or triple that amount, Ybarra said. The program will run through 2009 even if the $1 million goal is reached early, she said.
Although DogPile has helped raise funds for animal causes in the past and currently works actively with Petfinder.com, this is the first time the company has based its giving on a percentage of proceeds.
“Programs like Search & Rescue can change the way corporations and consumers approach charitable giving. You search, and together we rescue,” Ybarra said.
Due to the shaky economy, people are currently curtailing their charitable giving, and animal welfare causes are being especially hard hit, according to a national survey of 1,001 people conducted for DogPile.
The survey also found that 18 percent of people knew someone, possibly themselves, that had given up a pet as a result of financial hardship.
Posted January 29, 2009 |