The charity malls sign up participating merchants through affiliate programs and partnerships. Most malls offer consumers a choice of charities from either a database of the 640,000 nonprofits in the U.S. registered with the Internal Revenue Service or a preselected list of preferred charities, or some mixture of the two. These fundraising tactics certainly have a receptive audience. Eight-three percent of these donations come from individuals. Va. But some charities are picking up steam quickly.
Many merchants are happy to part with a percentage of sales as a marketing expense, if nothing else.
The large charities have plenty of members that could be targeted for promotions. If DeVries is right, this could mean billions of dollars flowing to charity in the future. Unfortunately, while lots of money is being collected, not all of it is going to those in need. Some charity malls pocket a huge chunk of transactions for themselves in the name of overhead costs. On a donation of 5 percent of a sale, some organizations keep half for themselves.