DoGooder done and dusted.

DoGooder was a plug-in for your browser that replaced traditional ads on the websites you visited with ads that raised money for good causes.

Sounds great.

As GOOD put it so eloquently in a post written earlier this year:

Which messages would you rather see while you were browsing online?

Buy a Chevy Malibu! Get the New American Express Gold Card! Watch the Real Housewives of New Jersey on Bravo! Eat ReddiWip!

Or:

Ride your bike to work. Support urban farms. Fertilize your garden with used coffee grounds. Donate your old phone. Pee in the shower.

But after just over a year of business, the Canadian company, DoGooder posted their final blog post and announced “it’s been a good run, but today we are shutting down our service indefinitely.”

It was an interesting idea. To swap ads that a visitor sees on a website so they are presented only socially-minded advertising. They aimed to give 50% of their profits to charity, and keep the other 50%. Sounds like a feasible business venture. But they needed a large network of people running their plug-in to attract the advertisers, and make the business profitable. Unfortunately the demand was not there, and in the end it was lack of income that resulted in the network closing.

Why did people not use DoGooder?

–       Felt they were stealing income from the site owners (by switching out ads, the income that would have been generated from click-throughs on the original ads would now go 50% to DoGooder and 50% to charity).

–       Too hard.

–       People like bad online advertising.

Whatever the reason, it is sad to see a charity supporting, socially-minded online business shut it’s doors.

If you didn’t have to do much, to do some good, would you? Hint: It would have taken 10 seconds and it was free.

Would you have used DoGooder?