The Hunger Site
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Hunger Site is a click-to-donate site created in 1999 that gets sponsorship from advertisers in return for delivering users who will see their advertisements. The Hunger Site is not a charity; it is a for-profit corporation which donates the revenue from its advertising banner to selected charities. As of January 2006, these are America's Second Harvest and Mercy Corps.
The site claims that to date, over 200 million visitors have resulted in the donation of more than 300 million cups of staple food.
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[edit] History
The Hunger Site was originally started by John Breen (programmer), a computer programmer from Indiana. It was later acquired by the GreaterGood network. Following the dot-com bubble, GreaterGood ceased operations. In August 2001, GreaterGood was sold to a company called CharityUSA.com.
[edit] Similar sites
CharityUSA.com also owns and operates:
- The Rainforest Site to purchase and preserve rainforest land
- The Breast Cancer Site to fund mammograms for low-income women
- The Literacy Site to provide books to children in low-income families
- The Animal Rescue Site to give food and care to abandoned animals in shelters
- The Child Health Site to provide the goods that were previously offered by the following three now-defunct sites in the network.
[edit] Defunct sites
These sites were operated by GreaterGood in association with the Hunger Site but became defunct once CharityUSA.com bought Greatergood:
- The Child Survival Site to provide vitamin A supplements to prevent blindness and disease
- The Kids AIDS Site to provide medications to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV
- The Landmine Site to provide prostheses to people who lost limbs in landmine explosions
[edit] Inspired sites
The Hunger Site has also inspired similar sites that are not owned or maintained by the owners of the Greater Good network. Several, the first two of which are now defunct, include:
- The Hungry Site, a parody site that claimed to raise funds to buy steak and gourmet coffee for its owner, who'd been fired from his job
- The Birth Site, a site run by the Catholic Nurturing Network to fund crisis pregnancy centers.
- The Bible Site, which uses a different visual format but was inspired by The Hunger Site's naming conventions. It funds sending Bibles to Christians in countries where it's difficult to find copies.
- The Environment Site seems to donate to Surrey Wildlife Trust.
