Other awards:
Old News
The following were once posted as "What's New" on the main page, but were moved here when they were more than three months old:
May 2003
May 14, 2003: Apologies for the lack of updates, but my life has been insane and it's getting harder and harder just to keep up with the sites that disappear! And actually, I have other commitments for the next couple of months that are going to have to take priority over my website as a whole. So, don't worry, this site isn't abandoned and it won't be, but there won't likely be an update until later summer or early fall. At that point, I'm hoping to do a full overhaul and whittle down the review list to a manageable state. I'm even considering changing the format to a "featured site of the month" type of model where one site gets reviewed that month. We'll see. Until then, I hope you all have a good summer!
February 2003
February 27, 2003: I have replaced the Bobby graphic with A-Prompt, because Bobby is now for-profit software with limited online usage. I have also updated the criteria to reflect this change. A bunch of other little errors and things in need of update have been fixed. Most importantly, the list of charities has been cleaned up, with new lists added for better management and clarification. The following changes were made:
- Removals:
- Cause an Effect (URL: http://www.causeanaffect.org/) was not found. Site deleted from list. Had not been reviewed due to failure of confirmation with stated recipient.
- The Environment Site (URL: http://www.environmentsite.com/) has a message saying it has been permanently shut down. Site deleted from list. Had been reviewed with grade B.
- Click for Hope (URL: http://www.clickforhope.org/) no longer appears to have a click-to-donate element. Site deleted from list. Had been reviewed as Not Recommended.
- Royal Flying Doctor Service (URL: http://www.allfarmersrural.com.au/rfds/index.htm) was not found. Site deleted from list. Had been reviewed as Not Recommended.
- Race for the Panda (URL: http://panda.care2.com/) is no longer listed at Care2.com. Site deleted from list. Had not yet been reviewed.
- Hospicecaresite (URL: http://www.hospicecaresite.com/) now redirects to eBay. Site deleted from list. Had not yet been reviewed.
- We Did (URL: http://www.wedid.net/) is not found. Site deleted from list. Had not yet been reviewed.
- Save the Bush (URL: http://savethebush.vr9.com/) redirects to a DVD sales site. Site deleted from list. Had not yet been reviewed.
- Society for Women's Health Research (URL: http://www.tumscalciumforlife.com/swhr.asp) was not found. Site deleted from list. Had not yet been reviewed.
- The Good Spider (URL: http://www.thegoodspider.com/) is no longer a click-to-donate site. Site deleted from list. It had been reviewed with a grade of B.
- Changes:
- WebReleaf (URL: http://www.webreleaf.com) is not currently accepting clicks for donations. It will be moved to the Temporarily Down list.
- Save The Rainforest Net (URL: http://www.saverainforest.net/) was rumoured to have been gone, but it seems still there with a planned comeback soon. It will be moved to the Temporarily Down list.
- GiveWater (URL: http://www.givewater.org) had been reviewed with grade C, but now has a message that it is not collecting donations for the time being. The message says they will eventually relaunch, so I'm leaving the review as is, but moving it to the Temporarily Down list.
- NSPCC's Donate-4-Free (URL: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/donate-4-free/donate-mainhome.asp) is currently not taking donations, but there's a message saying that it will eventually relaunch. I've signed up to be notified when it does. For now, it will be moved to the Temporarily Down list.
- Web of Charity (URL: http://www.webofcharity.com/) is no longer claiming to have any click-to-donate portion. However, since the site had been reviewed as Not Recommended and had serious issues with its failure to actually collect and pass on funding (thus wasting the time of users who thought their clicks were raising money), I'm leaving it as an archived report, accessible under the Not Recommended list.
- Additions:
- Race for the Oceans (URL: http://oceans.care2.com/)
- Race for the Primates (URL: http://primates.care2.com/)
- The Child Health Site (URL: http://www.thechildhealthsite.com/)
- The Animal Rescue Site (URL: http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/)
- I'll go through suggestions made over the past few months tomorrow and add more new sites to the list (assuming any of them are the right kind...it's utterly amazing how often people suggest the wrong type of site!!).
- New Policies:
- All sites which had been set to "Review Pending" for ages, usually because I couldn't get a response of any kind from the stated beneficiary, have been placed on a new, separate list called Unconfirmable. I've decided that if I can't confirm transfer of funds with the beneficiary within three months, the site won't be reviewed and users can take that lack of confirmation to mean whatever they want it to mean. The onus is henceforth on the collection sites to ensure that their beneficiaries are willing to acknowledge them in some way.
- I'm going to discontinue having the little navigation arrows in the upper left corner that go from review to review. It's just too much of a pain to edit those every time a site disappears.
February 16, 2003: Quick update...I survived surgery and I'm still recovering, but hopefully will have some more significant updates here soon.
December 2002
December 25, 2002: Happy holidays! Unfortunately, I still haven't had a chance to update this site. I've also recently received some good and bad news that will seriously impact my ability to do updates here until late February at the earliest: first, I'm being hired on at the environmental group where I've been volunteering for the past year. That's the good news. The bad news is a health problem has flared up and I'll have to have surgery again in late January to fix it, which will knock me out for a few weeks. Have no fear, this site is NOT going away and will NOT be abandoned, but due to these circumstances, I'll be unable to do much with it for the next couple of months. Once life calms down a bit, I hope to have a more regular schedule and include a weekly review/update as part of that.
November 2002
November 20, 2002: AACK! Where did the month go? I haven't had time to do an update to this stuff lately, sorry. Will do so next time I get a chance.
October 2002
October 3, 2002: Review posted for AidForTeens. Also, there is a new policy noted on the Criteria page.
August 2002
August 24, 2002: Added link for mailing list for notifications to kimberlychapman.com to main page, contact page, and forum page.
August 7, 2002: The following changes and updates were made:
- Reviews are no longer being said to be done every six months, since it has become obvious to me that I cannot keep up with such a schedule. Instead, reviews will simply go through the list in order that items are listed. New items will be reviewed with a priority before re-reviews of sites already reviewed.
- Requests for re-reviews will now be honoured in the order of receipt and as soon as possible instead of waiting for all sites to be reviewed (assuming a re-review is warranted, requests without sufficient change or simply because of disagreement with the review will still be denied). Requests for re-reviews now must come from a representative of the reviewed site. "Fan" requests will be ignored.
- Due to the volume of email received, the contact page now states that not all emails will be answered. Site suggestion emails will be read and suitable sites added as time permits, but these and other emails will not always be answered.
- Despite my request to not be asked to write grant proposals, manage charities, etc., I still get way too much email asking me for help in these areas. I used to respond with a form letter, but the contact page has been changed to state that I will henceforth simply ignore such mail. I don't have time to deal with people who can't read instructions.
- Updates were made to the FAQ to reflect these policy changes as necessary.
- A new criterion was added under Useful: "The site does not induce pop-up windows, disable browser buttons, or otherwise hijack the user's browser or computer. Such activities not only hamper accessibility, but are really annoying." This means the criteria number is now 1.40.
- The links page was updated. Dead links were removed and a few more were added.
June 2002
June 28, 2002: Again, apologizes for lack of updates. We're approaching the Senate vote regarding Yucca mountain, so the Citizen Alert office is insanely busy and I'm volunteering full-time. After the vote, things should calm down one way or another and I'll be back to reviews. Sorry for any inconvenience during this time.
May 2002
May 22, 2002: Sorry for the lack of updates here. As I mentioned in the forum, I have been spending most of my time lately volunteering for Citizen Alert, a non-profit environmental activist group in Nevada. They hope to hire me on as full staff once they have the funding to do so. This means I have less time than I did when I was unemployed. Add in some volunteer work for the Green Party and the Sierra Club, and I'm pretty busy lately! However, this site is not going away and I am not abandoning it. Just please be patient for updates! I updated the About page today to reflect that I have received some Amazon gift certificates based on a book recommendation page elsewhere on this site.
April 2002
April 8, 2002: Review posted for Climb to End Breast Cancer.
March 2002
March 2, 2002: Review posted for Race for the Big Cats. As stated previously, Good Spider and Help The Hungry have not updated as promised to continue as click-to-donate sites. They have been removed, but the Good Spider review has been archived in case it comes back in the future.
February 2002
February 17, 2002: Due to changes with the Bobby test and qualifications, I have had to change all of the graphics throughout my site to the Bobby Approved A graphic instead of the previous version 3.2 graphic. A change was made to the criteria to reflect this new Bobby testing method. Also, the following updates were made to the list of charities:
- Click Fome is 404, and I've never been able to successfully contact anyone at that site or at the stated beneficiary's site. It has been removed from the list.
- Donate for Free stopped being a UNICEF-supporting site after September 11, 2001, and purported for some time instead to be collecting funds for the American Red Cross. It has now converted to a completely Japanese site with no noticeable donation element. It has been removed from the list.
- Good Spider and Help the Hungry will have another couple of weeks to demonstrate they are still click to donate sites. After that, they will be removed from the list. Since Good Spider has already been reviewed, however, I will archive the review in case the site is relisted in the future, so the new review can refer to the old one.
January 2002
January 16, 2002: Review posted for GiveWater. I went through the links page to check that sites were still running and made a few changes. Also, the following updates were made to the list of charities:
- Stichting Internet Donaties is no longer a click to donate site, but just a listing of sites. It has been removed from the list and moved to the links page.
- Freerelief.net has been a non-donating site since at least November. It appears to be abandoned, but doesn't have a donate button or anything so I'm not worried that people will waste time clicking there. It has been removed from the list.
- Lend a Paw has been 404 for a long time. It has been removed from the list.
- Good Spider is not a free donation site at the moment, but says this is temporary. I'll check again in a month or so and if it hasn't returned to free donations, I'll delete their review and remove them from the list.
- Help the Hungry isn't a click to donate site at the moment, but says an announcement will be made on the site this month, so I'll wait to see what that is before deleting it.
- Wings of the Americas is no longer a free donation page on the Nature Conservancy site. It has been deleted from the list.
- LionAid's domain is for sale. It has been deleted from the list.
- Fight Hunger is 404 and has been for some time. It has been deleted from the list.
December 2001
December 11, 2001: Reviews posted for I Want Clean Air and EcologyFund.
November 2001
November 26: Review posted for Race for the Rainforest.
October 2001
October 30: Been slow getting confirmations lately! However, I have a new review posted, for PovertyFighters.com.
September 2001
September 22, 2001: Review posted for SolvePoverty. Review postponed for Ecology Fund because of new beneficiaries that need verification. Apologies for the delay since the last note, but as everyone has noticed, the world pretty much went to hell on the 11th, and I, like many people, was glued to the TV for many days and had a lot of trouble sleeping. There are some one-click sites that have been set up to help in one way or another with the tragedy, but I don't plan to review them because I don't know how long they'll be around. Check the Forum for messages people have posted about these special new sites.
September 10, 2001: Review posted for Click For United Way. I will have reviews done for Ecology Fund and SolvePoverty in the next few days.
September 2, 2001: Sorry there's been nothing updated lately. I've been sick a lot, and swamped when not sick. I've done a major update to the list of charities, now that The Hunger Site and two of its sisters are back, and since many of the sites have been closed down recently due to lack of advertising support. Several completed reviews have been removed from the list as a result. Over the next week or two, I'll be sending out another large batch of confirmation requests, and should be able to post a review or two soon.
August 2001
August 12, 2001: Been a bit slow for confirmations lately, which is why no new reviews have been posted. But I'm quoted in a Wired article regarding the demise of the GreaterGood.com sites!
July 2001
July 26, 2001: Review posted for The Birth Site.
July 25, 2001: Review posted for End Cancer Now.
July 24, 2001: I keep getting email questions about the GreaterGood.com sites. For more information about that situation, please see the article in Seattle P-I.
July 24, 2001: I've put up a link to a forum where anyone can discuss the reviews on this site or online philanthropy in general.
July 24, 2001: All of the GreaterGood.com reviews have been deleted, since there's not much point in having them now that the sites are gone. When/if the URLs are taken over and built into new one-click sites, they'll be added to the review list like any other site and reviewed in due course.
July 23, 2001: Review posted for Clear Land Mines.
July 21, 2001: I have just learned that GreaterGood.com is shutting down. This means all of their sites (The Hunger Site, The Rain Forest Site, etc.) will also be down until/unless someone else acquires the URLs and restarts them. In the next few days, I'll decide whether to archive the reviews or remove them completely.
July 13, 2001: Review posted for Help the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Also, a clarification has been made to part of the criteria. See the criteria changes information for more details.
July 10, 2001: WebofCharity is not collecting or distributing funds at this time, and thus has been given Not Recommended status. Read more about it on the review page. Also, a review of LifeSaver has been posted.
July 9, 2001: Review posted for The Environment Site.
July 9, 2001: I've added a line to the "pertinent data" section of the review template. Subsequent reviews will now include information on how payment is made to the beneficiary, i.e. if it's sent directly from sponsors, if it goes through the site's account first, etc. This will be a one-sentence summary as taken from the site's posted data; not a financial review.
July 8, 2001: Criteria updated to include a new criterion regarding donation totals. See the criteria changes information for more details.
July 8, 2001: Review posted for The Stop HIV Site.
July 7, 2001: This site now features ratings by ICRA and SafeSurf, as indicated by the associated graphics in the side bar. For details on the ratings, please see the ratings page.
July 2, 2001: One-Click Charity Check is world famous! The site was mentioned in an Australian consumer magazine. Check out the details.
July 1, 2001: Review posted for Save A Stray.
June 2001
June 22, 2001: I've posted a Sample Charity set of templates for free use to help people build well-constructed free donation sites.
June 21, 2001: The new computer is here, but I still can't access my old email. It is held up in an Outlook 98 .pst file, as is the address book. I had a free downloaded copy of Outlook 98 (legally, of course) from its early days, but when the motherboard died the registry died with it, and I can't recover the program. I have a replacement on order, which hopefully will arrive in the next day or two. So updates are still on hold, as are reviews that require email confirmations sitll held in that .pst file. Sorry for any inconvenience.
June 11, 2001: My motherboard died. I have a backup computer to use for incoming email, but all of my files are on my old drive. When I get the new computer in 3-5 business days, I'll move all of the old files on it. This means there will probably be no updates to these pages in the meantime. Also, any unanswered mail sent before June 8 will remain unanswered since I can't get to it, and because I don't have the addresses for the CancerCharities.com update mailing list, no further updates will be mailed out until I can get to my old data. Sorry if this causes anyone any inconvenience.
June 8, 2001: I've reported Cancercharities.com to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. See the alert page for more information.
June 6, 2001: Regarding the Cancercharities.com Alert: no, I haven't stopped working on that. I'm giving them until Friday as specified, and then I'll make a report to the FBI, including the increasingly threatening email I have received.
June 6, 2001: I'm going through all of the pages to fix an error that occurs in some old versions of Netscape (4.7x). The HTML 4.0 specification to put "border" and other style tags into a style definition within a graphic tag was conflicting with these older Netscape versions by using a colon instead of an equal sign. I am replacing all of these on all pages. If any reader finds another browser-related error, please contact me.
May 2001
May 31, 2001: Regular updates are being posted to the Cancercharities.com Alert. Please remember to refresh/reload the page frequently in case your browser is storing an older version of the page.
May 29, 2001: An ALERT has been posted regarding Cancercharities.com.
May 29, 2001: The criteria have been updated to include a new criterion. This new criterion reflects the need for sites to allow users to access information about the site before clicking to donate. See the Criteria page for more information on the update. Also, a review for Click For Hope has been posted.
May 28, 2001: Review posted for The Good Spider. Also, this site has won an award without even applying for one! Check out the details on the About page.
May 13, 2001: I haven't disappeared, but I've been sick for a couple of weeks, and I've got about 15 requests for confirmation out there, waiting to be answered. Hopefully a new review will be posted next week! In the meantime, I'll be expanding the list of sites to be reviewed.
May 3, 2001: Review posted for End Homelessness Now.
May 1, 2001: Assessment of the WFP/Hunger Site problem posted. Some new links added, including Idealist.org, and then a warning about Idealist.org and why many one-click sites should not waste their time registering there.
April 2001
April 24, 2001: Review posted for The Humanitarian Site.
April 20, 2001: Review posted for The Child Survival Site. Added the following pages: "A+" List, "A" List, and Not Recommended List. Plus, the criteria have had a minor update.
April 16, 2001: There are new updates to the FAQ, including information on whether or not sites have to "join" One-Click Charity Check and related issues. The FAQ has also been slightly reorganized to be logically ordered, with subgroups.
April 14, 2001: Press release issued and posted, and more links added on the links page.
April 13, 2001: Review posted for Webreleaf.
April 10, 2001: Reviews posted for The Hunger Site and The Landmine Site.
April 6, 2001: Reviews posted for The Kids AIDS Site and The Breast Cancer Site. The Hunger Site review is nearing completion, and should be up in a day or two.
April 3, 2001: Review posted for The Rain Forest Site.