Archive
Crowdfunding; Charities turn out to be a booming business
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet. (photo/www.blackenterprise.com)
Crowdfunding is by definition, “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.” Forbes.com
Some of these sites, like Fundraise.com,CauseVox, DoJiggy’s Pledge software andFundly were set up specifically to help non-profits raise money to support their causes. Others, like Kickstarter and indiegogo, aren’t non-profit specific but have been used by charities to raise money to support their mission. Today, let’s talk about crowd-funding websites for non-profits: what they are, and how your organization can use them to raise more money quickly and efficiently.
I have been following many charity driven websites that are profiting from the necessity of people. These domain sites turn-out online business make very easy for anybody that wants to tap into the business to get on board betraying their own people when they use them to support this unethical enterprise. (Fundraising Authority)
Currently there are hundreds wordwide of domains used to collect donations.
Indiegogo and Kickstarter are two of the most successful online companies engaged in the donation business or attracting capital for new ventures, these two companies were create with the idea to help new enterpruniers out in their feet but soon it had evolved to more diverse capital attracting business.
Indiegogo, “When your campaign raises funds, Indiegogo charges a 9.0% fee on the funds you raise. If you reach your goal, you get 5.0% back, for an overall fee of 4.0%” indiegogo website.
youcaring, “How Does YouCaring Make Money If It’s Always Free for Everyone?
We are supported by thousands of contributors from all over the world who have a heart to help people in the middle of challenging life situations. We are incredibly thankful to our donors for allowing us to continue to help thousands of people everyday.”
GoFundme created October 2010, owner, Andrew Ballester, organization, California Product Shop Inc. whose President is Brad Damphousse a millionaire in the donation business.
The website that you are using is profiting from Gaza, Africa, South America, Syria, Iraq and any other country that suffer war.
The truth is that you do not know who is on the other side of the campaign.
The photo below is an example of a campaign for Gaza, the organizer of the campaign shows to be somebody profile name Jilu, if you click on the link, the the real name shows on a facebook profile as Mohammed Abdulmajeed, which seems to be the same person I interviewed via email, the same person that created IgiveOnline.com, if he is successful on the campaigns he organize he could be making a money out of the misery of Gaza, and if the campaigns that he hosts in his website are successful, he is making double the money.
We could call him entrepreneur, a visionary, a philanthropist, or simply a person taking advantage of a disadvantageous situation. You be the judge!
Rebuild Gaza
The campaigner is Mohammed with various projects, his goal 8,000 pounds.
OUR PROJECTS:
- Water Plantation (Water Supply)
Click here to find out more : http://bit.ly/GazaWaterSupply
Uninterruptible Power Supply (Switch on Gaza)
Click here to find out more: http://bit.ly/GazaElectricity
- Celox (Stop the bleeding)
Click here to find out more: http://bit.ly/GazaCelox
Jilu Miah shows as the organizer of the campaign Rebuild Gaza, click on it and Mohammed real profile appears. (snapshots from IgiveOnline.com Rebuild Gaza
In a email interview Mohammed Abdumajeed said what made him fund Igiveonline. He is a college graduate from the United Kingdom, he is in his thirties and said to work for the education directorate. He studied creative design and worked in sales after college.
“Igiveonline.com was started as a way for me to collect donations for a cause I believed in. After seeing other websites and the charges associated with them, I sought to make my own online page for my fundraising so I could lessen the charges.” Said Abdulmajeed
Igiveonline like dozens other domains had turned out to be a huge revenue for their founders. Abdulmajeed said to have currently 15 to 20 campaigns going on.
These websites work as a gateway for campaigners that find it easy to just open an account and create a campaign, all they have to do is find a cause, register the cause and distribute the links with their friends in facebook or in any other social platform.
At first this look as a really good cause after all these websites work channeling money to people in need, but there is no accountability for the people that create these campaigns, all you need to do is post photos and a credible story and you have a business running.
According to Abdulmajeed he charges 4 percent fee to individuals, 3 percent to Non-Profits and 2 percent to registered non-profit, but who is he to decide who is non profit, or register non profit, is he some government agent with the power to decide who is is who?
I had noticed that few individuals were already collecting money long before the summer war in Gaza, some may be rightly given the money to needed people, some may have been defrauding their friends and followers, we never will know. But, something very very sure, crowd-funding is a booming business and multi-billion dollar business. Some websites collect from 7 to 20 percent depending on the level of advertisement; example of them Indiegogo , youcaring, GoFundme , Igiveonline.com, these websties allow the user to create campaigns where all they have to do is register and write a story about the campaign, these are just few of them, but after the summer assault to Gaza few more pop out.
We can not deny that there is great need in Gaza, and lots of families do not like the idea to go to make line to pick up bags of food, so they are using online campaigns to collect money, besides I heard from many friends that they are ‘proud to beg’, also many young people in Gaza is taking advantage and creating campaigns to buy camera equipment, to build their homes, buy school supplies.
Good or bad the online campaigns are making the CEO of crowd-funding billionaires.
We always have send money to Gaza without the use of NGOs, they have bad reputation specially the managers of the NGOs, they end up keeping lots of aid or favoring their families, that is a all well known situation in Palestine, non only Gaza, but West Bank as well.
Anyway we know better, if we know our friends we help them, if we feel they are cheating then is on us. In the mean time Gaza infrastructure needs to be reconstructed, but it seems that Palestinian Authority started using their leverage on the situation, and their position as “the ones in charge of reconstruction” to crack down on Hamas and take the political power from them.
The real situation in Gaza is not going to be fix by handouts, online campaigns, AID, NGOs, the situation in Gaza first will change when Israel remove the illegal blockade of their borders, and economy, and second, when the Israel occupation get dismantle once and for all.
Gaza 50 days War: Hamas’s Return Ticket to the Middle East
By Wahid Mardane
Researcher at Neda Institute
Hamas military wing resistance fighters
October 19, 2014(Tehran, Iran)-After many ups and downs across the Rafah border and early the return of Hamas’s ideological father (Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood) to the pages of history and consequently Hamas’s confusion against the region’s balance in that juncture, most experts acknowledged that this movement had stepped into a period of weakness and even annihilation in its history as political force. The unexpected departure from Syria of the leadership of Hamas, and its turn to the political-ideological front of traditional compromising states in the region, including; Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, etc. from the one hand and Israelis’ spreading “red carpets” to this movement including suppling of cement and drinking water to Gaza Strip, giving more concessions to Gaza’s fishermen. besides, some of Israeli political and military officials comments like the Northern command on preferring Hamas over other factions in Gaza, this caused the future of the resistance in the region to be added to the other multiple puzzles in the Middle East.There is the possibility that many of the experts do not have any information about the military capabilities of Hamas or they have neglected it, because in the afore-mentioned juncture authentic news were broadcast about strained relations between Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran and even the two sides confirmed it. Therefore, very few people were thinking about the fact that in the very juncture, political and military deals were running between Iran-Syria and Hamas and even the political crisis I Egypt and Iran-Hamas disputes behind the doors had made the Zionists neglect the arms transfer to Gaza.Now, after the Zionists’ invasion of Gaza, the Resistance Faction’s advanced arms and offensive-defensive systems are conspicuously visible. In this regard, chief of Hamas’s foreign relations, Osama Hamdan remarks that the Resistance is of the readiness to continue the war for months even if Hams is the initiator of the next war with the purpose of taking the occupied territories out of the claws of the Zionists.
In fact what is currently going on about Hamas can be mentioned as a tangible example of turning a threat into an opportunity. Gaza war took place under the circumstances where Hamas was held accountable by the Iranian and Syrian public opinions and elites for its performance about Syrian and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt. Therefore, since Hamas was aware of its defensive and arms advances, it was waiting for a chance to see its flag once again at the hands of the Resistance supporters in the region. Now, one can acknowledge that once again this flag has become an identity-constructing one and maybe it is for this reason that Hamas is not keen on putting an end to the war.
This hypothesis seems to be true for 5 reasons:
Stop of Israel-Hamas serial wars
Both Palestinian and Zionist analysts are of the belief that Israel-Hamas wars have been like a never-ending series and will continue as episodes. The time and place and characters change, but according to the definition of episode “place and time of the characters change, but the players and the main subject do not change.” Now, the place of war has been shifted from air to land and the characters from the air force to the land force. So, knowing this, Hamas is going to have more interventions in the scenario of the war of 2014 in order to write its script for its favor.
Change in the intervals of upcoming wars from short to long
Hamas is going to prolong the average interval of its wars against the Zionists from a couple of years to a decade at least. The war of 2008, Gaza siege in 2010 and the war of 2012 and also the recent war of 2014 are indicative of a 2 year pattern in the intervals of the cease fire which is to be changed. In the unwritten goals of the Zionist officials, the notion of a severe war against Gaza with the purpose of achieving a more prolonged peace and security had been applied which can confirm the bi-directionality of the mentioned goal.
Proof of Hamas’s development and maturity without the “assistant wheels” of other countries
Hamas is keen to show that without Syria and Egypt’s spiritual and geopolitical supports, it can continue its resistance and proceed with a draft of getting out of war without the intervention of the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt’s new system. Of course, Hamas should know that the present and upcoming victories may once again intoxicate them and cause them to make the same mistakes as they did in the political sphere in connection with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Hence, there is no doubt that the independence of Hamas should be the top priority of pro-resistance countries; but by the time it is fully achieved, assistant wheels should be relied on.
Finding a chance for break time in domestic sphere
Concurrent with the war of 2014, Hamas temporarily got out of the socio-economic crisis it was suffering from. Not payment of the employees’ salaries, striking growth of poverty and unemployment and Gaza people’s social dissatisfactions were among other major issues which had put Hamas in a weak position. But, now concurrent with the war, not only it is not accused as the initiator of misfortunes from the domestic and international point of view, but it is introduced as a savior.
War of 2014 as a return ticket to the region
With surprising psychological and military achievements in the war of 2014, the resistance factions have managed to get the ticket of a powerful return to the region. All in all, as expected, the war of 2014 like the previous ones turned out to be short, because in less than ten days serious proposals for cease fire were offered mediated by Egypt which were supposed to be accepted immediately by the resistance factions as in the previous wars. But we had argued that a cease fire in less than 10 days had depended on the reaction of the resistance factions and these factions seized the new chance in which there were a shortage of mediators and less pressure from the previous compromising Islamic states and thus, they prolonged the war as long as they got more concessions.
The victory of Gaza Children against IDF in 50 days Gaza-imposed-war!
Therefore, a historical victory for the resistance factions due to their steadfastness on the continuation of the war it happened and today we can see fresh eyes on Gaza after 50 days typhoon. Now we can yield and praised the victory of Gaza’s children against IDF. So the new generation of Gaza is known as the Palestine future Iron Domes.
Possibly, the next episode of the Zionists’ war against the resistance factions will take place underground, under the land of the prophets and we should wait some new defence systems by Israel as the Underground Iron Domes.
Neda Institute for Scientific Political Research was established in 1996. Due to the direct impacts of the establishment of the Israeli usurper regime on the international policies, particularly on the Middle East and the world of Islam, a group of researchers, Middle East and international relations of islam’s world followers established Neda institute and launched a new move in the developments of the region. The main object of such institute is to acquaintance with the existing political mechanisms in the Middle East as well as a deeper understanding of current social, political, cultural and economic developments of the political units in the region. According to the role and impact of the destructive policies of the holy Quds occupier regime on the countries of the region as well as on the international system, the general direction of the Neda’s activities focused on a proper and true cognition in accordance with a scientific approach to the current developments and political events in the Middle East. Thus, understanding the roots of the crisis and being familiar with the intellectual foundations of Zionism and the overt and covert advocates of Israel in the West, particularly the United States, was put on the agenda.Since then, Neda Institute has succeeded in carriying out a number of applied studies for the addressees and customers. In the light of the expertise capabilities as well as the contacts and considerable credit it has gained in the international arena, Neda Institute has achieved a special status as a professional institute.The Farsi version of this article can be found here
Wahid Mardane, political researcher at Neda Institute (photo/Neda Institute)
Wahid Mardane is Master student of Middle East Studies at the University of Tehran, he is political researcher at Neda Institute, a non-profit organization that focus on Palestine issues. Mardane is also political and peace activist, he has been invited as a speaker on Middle East affairs in academic meetings. He has written various articles, The function of censorship, Playing with statistics in the literature Gaza 50 days war, The struggle of mediations in the midst of Gaza war. Mardane is also founder of the global movement Celebrities4Palestine hashtag #Celebs4Pal
Noor Abu Jarad left homeless and orphan
Noor Abu Jarad went to sleep at night, woke up in Al-Shifa Hospital. Then was told that her entire family of 8 members were all killed; after Israel targeted their home. She was the only survivor. I wonder how her life will continue from now on..
18 hours ago the update on Gaza was 307 deaths. Now it is 345 deaths! And from 2268 injured to 2560 injured!! This is just astonishing and heartbreaking. I’m running out of words to explain Israel’s brutal, inhuman and illegal actions..
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said the new round of airstrikes raised the death toll from the 12-day offensive to at least 342 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
61 people were killed in Friday alone, Saturday 10, the tally is 309 Palestinian killed so far in this 17 days of slaughter. But who is counting right?
Source: Ma’an News Agency
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — 22 Palestinians were killed overnight with at least ten killed just since day break on Saturday as Israeli forces continued their military offensive against the Gaza Strip by air, sea, and land for the twelfth day, Palestinian medical sources said.
The killings follow the deadliest day in the conflict so far, after Israel killed at least 52 Palestinians and injured more than 400 on the first day of their ground invasion of the besieged coastal enclave.
Spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza Ashraf al-Qidra said on Saturday that Israeli forces had “committed a massacre against Palestinian civilians” in the Khan Younis district in the southern Gaza Strip overnight, killing seven.
He identified the victims as 20-year-old Yahya Bassam al-Serri, Muhammad Bassam al-Serri, 17, Mahmoud Ridha Salihiyya, 56, Mustafa Ridha Salihiyya, 21, Wasim Ridha Salihiyya, 15, Muhammad Mustafa Salihiyya, 22, and Ibrahim Jamal Kamal Nasr, 13.
Al-Qidra also said that 27-year-old Raed Walid Laqan was killed in Khan Younis by an Israeli attack on a home belonging to the Tartouri family.
In addition, 30-year-old Said Ali Issa was killed in Juhor Addik neighborhood in the central Gaza Strip near al-Bureij refugee camp.
34-year-old Ahmad Mahmoud Hasan Aziz was killed by an Israeli missile on his home in Abraj al-Nada in the northern Gaza Strip overnight as well.
Saturday morning’s deaths bring the total death toll of 12 days of Israeli military offensive in Gaza to 309 in addition to 2268 injuries, according to al-Qidra.
The spokesman highlighted that Friday was the deadliest day of Israel’s military aggression on Gaza with 52 Palestinians killed as of midnight.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that 71 children, 25 women and 17 elderly people have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza as of Friday night.
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip — which it has dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” — in response to rocket fire from the area, which had increased in the weeks before the operation due to a massive Israeli military operation in the West Bank.
10 Palestinians died, more than 130 were injured, and more than 600 Hamas-affiliated individuals were arrested during that operation, which was launched following the disappearance of three Israeli youths in June.
Israel accused Hamas of being behind the disappearance, and in addition to the assault on the West Bank launched nightly airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which has been under a full economic blockade for the last seven years.
Hamas, however, denied the charges, and many have accused Israel of using the subsequent deaths of the three Israeli teenagers as a pretext for a widespread assault on the group.
Media at war with the truth; while Gaza is slaughter
CNN Reassigns Reporter Who Called Israelis Cheering Bombs ‘Scum’ in Tweet, reads The New York Times headlines today.
It seems that the conglomerate media is more worried for sensitivities, than covering Israel slaughter in Gaza. The Truth!
Yesterday the whole world saw the tweet being distributed in facebook, twitter and other social networks the ‘insensitive tweet’ of Diana Magnay, CNN reporter of Gaza war, as many Israel supporter called it. Insensitive? did you watch the video in Tel Aviv today, of ‘extremist’ the New York times called them, yelling “Fuck the Arabs” “Kill the Arabs” at a Anti-war demonstration.
While Gaza is being destroyed, people being indiscriminately killed, the Stream Media worry for for the crowd of Israeli’s sensitivities.
A snapshot of Diana Magnay tweet before being removed calling Israelis cheering Gaza bombs “Scam”
“On Thursday night, CNN correspondent Diana Magnay did a report from a hill in southern Israel, where a group of Israelis had gathered to watch the beginning of the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. As Magnay described the missiles flying through the sky behind her, the spectators could be heard cheering on the bombardment. “It is an astonishing, macabre and awful thing to watch this display of fire in the air,” she told Wolf Blitzer before signing off.” said the nymag.com
While the number of victims in Gaza is raising by the minute, just today called bloody Friday by Electronic Intifada, the death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza continues to rise.
“At least 61 people, at least 12 of them children, were killed on Friday alone, the second day of Israel’s ground invasion of parts of the Gaza Strip, and the twelfth and bloodiest day since Israel began bombarding the territory with airstrikes and land-based and naval artillery.
Eight members of a single family, the youngest six months old, were killed when a missile struck their home.” http://electronicintifada.net
Palestinian mourners gather around the body of five-month-old baby Faris al-Mahmoum during his funeral on 18 July in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. (Ashraf Amra / APA images)
Another media war against the people’s rights to know the truth happened yesterday where another correspondent was removed for publishing tweets
Questions Surround NBC’s Removal Of Ayman Mohyeldin From Gaza, New York Times heading reads, NBC executives said privately that the move was motivated by “security concerns” as Israel prepared a ground invasion.
Moyheldin’s reporting of his social media coverage of the tragic beach attack going viral. Mohyeldin tweeted Wednesday about having just played soccer with the children killed on the beach near several hotels where foreign journalists are staying. He covered their parents’ heartbreaking reaction on both Facebook and Instagram. Mohyeldin also worked on a TV package that was broadcast later on “NBC Nightly News.”
The role of the media is to report the truth in the most accurate and unbiased way as possible, what we have seen in the the last almost three weeks of Israel assault in Gaza is a media worried more for Israelis’ sensitivities than for reporting the truth.
“Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society’s principles and standards of practice. ” Preamble of Society of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics
Bury my heart at Gaza City
Posted on November 21, 2012 by Akashma Online News
By Hisham Elkoustaf
Morocco World News
Orange County, California, Nov 21, 2012
This morning, as part of my quotidian perusal of international sources for honest journalism, I was intrigued by the following news headline, “America is with you.” I became very angry as I thought I was reading a statement from US Congress expressing solidarity with its Israeli masters. The language was actually a direct quote from President Obama during his speech at the University of Yangon in Myanmar (formerly Burma), where he encouraged Myanmar to continue the transition to democracy. Wait a second. Is this the same Myanmar that just a few weeks ago slaughtered thousands in Rohingya?
At a time when Palestinian civilians are being massacred by the Israeli military, President Obama and his Secretary of State were busy visiting Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia as part of America’s effort to exert greater influence in the Asia-Pacific region. As American-made weapons continued to destroy Gaza, President Obama added insult to injury when he boasted about the merits of American-style democracy, stating “It’s worked for us for over 200 years now, and I think it’s going to work for Thailand and it’s going to work for this entire region. And the alternative, I think, is a false hope that, over time, I think erodes and collapses under the weight of people whose aspirations are not being met.”
One thing that cannot be denied about President Obama is that he is a fantastic orator. But how could he utter such beautiful words in defense of democracy when he continues to bless Israel’s denial of the aspirations of Palestinians? How could he pay lip service to democracy when he insists on rejecting the will of the people in Gaza?
As President Obama continues to be missing in action, at a time when we need his strong and balanced leadership, America’s corporate media, which masquerades as a legitimate news outlet, is regrettably saturated with right-wing pro Israeli extremists who regurgitate the same false narrative: Israel is simply defending herself against Palestinian aggression. Are we to believe that Palestinian children, dug up from the rubble of homes destroyed by on-going Israeli air strikes, are aggressors? Are we to accept that eight members of the Dalou family, including four children aged between one and seven, killed when an Israeli missile struck their home, are “terrorists”? Are we to accept that this is a “war” and that the Israeli military is acting according to internationally accepted norms of “warfare”?
So in the absence of honest American journalism, and as a challenge to the arguments of the right-wing pro Israel sycophants, let us examine just two examples of the heinous record of the criminal, bloodthirsty and savage Israeli army as it continues to murder defenseless Palestinian civilians. According to indisputable evidence found by an Amnesty International fact-finding team, during the 2009 slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, the Israeli army used, inter alia, white phosphorus, a weapon with a highly incendiary effect, in densely populated civilian residential areas of Gaza City. When white phosphorus lands on skin it burns deeply through muscle and into the bone, continuing to burn until deprived of oxygen. And the Israeli military does not discriminate when it comes to civilian targets. The 2009 naked aggression against Palestinian civilians included dropping a white phosphorus shell in the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, causing a fire that forced hospital staff to evacuate the patients.
According to Global Research, a center for research on globalization, during Israel’s vicious assault on Lebanon in July 2006, the UN estimated that Israel used massive amounts of cluster bombs and rained down around four million bomblets – most US-supplied – onto south Lebanon when a ceasefire had already been agreed. De-miners clearing Israeli-dropped cluster bombs in south Lebanon turned up an average of 10 new sites per month. A single cluster bomb can disperse hundreds of bomblets.
More shocking was Israel’s refusal to provide data that would assist clearing the estimated one million unexploded bomblets, which continue to kill and maim civilians and decimate rural livelihoods. Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon stated that all the weapons systems are computerized and grid references are entered before the bombs drop. Yet the shameless and arrogant Israeli military continues to deny the UN any information on the cluster bomb strike data arguing that the cluster munitions were fired at open and uninhabited areas in which no civilians were present. Sadly, around one million of the bomblets failed to explode on impact, leaving roads, schools, homes and fields littered with lethal explosives that detonate when touched, making them a danger similar to anti-personnel mines.
So as Israeli war planes continue their cowardly destruction of Gaza, the jury is still out on what sort of American tax-payer funded weaponry is being used on civilians. And as Palestinians continue to dig up bodies of women, men and children, President Obama maintains America’s modus operandi when it comes to policy on Israel: “do what you have to do and we got your back”. With powerful enablers such as America, the cowardly Israeli military has and will always enjoy complete impunity for its inhumane crimes.
This Thursday, millions of Americans unknowingly commemorate the Native American peoples’ genocide through massacres, forced relocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government. As part of a White House tradition, President Obama is scheduled to pardon one of two 19-week-old, Virginia-raised, 40-pound male turkeys, otherwise known as toms, or gobblers. If only the President was as committed to saving the lives of Palestinians as he is in saving fowl.
Hisham Elkoustaf is an attorney with over a decade of experience at the intersection of law, policy and international development. Hisham earned his B.A. in Political Science, Cum Laude, from Columbia University. He received an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University. He earned his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is a member of Morocco World News’ editorial team.
Akashma Online News 