Footprints Network Launches e-commerce Donations Application to Leave Positive Footprints all Over the Internet

Innovative Australian technology lies at the heart of a new internet application available to e-commerce businesses, one designed to harness the power of many customers making micro-donations to raise large amounts of money for selected global community projects.

With billions of dollars of e-commerce transactions occurring every day, a really small donation from enough people does make an enormous difference. We hope to inspire a broad network of e-commerce companies to get involved.

Sydney, NSW (PRWEB) April 16, 2007 -- While consumers are increasingly assessing the ethical values of the companies they do business with, it's often difficult for internet-based businesses to incorporate CSR practices into their operations, since they don't exist in the 'real world'. Footprints enables on-line retailers and other e-commerce businesses to incorporate the funding mechanism into their purchase path.

Founding partner, World Nomads, incorporated the system into its travel insurance business. When travellers buy a policy online, they are offered the choice of making a micro-donation of between $2.00 and $10.00 to one of a number of nominated community projects. Over 90 per cent of customers choose to do so.

In the application's trial period, 56,000 people made micro-donations totaling $176,000, into projects from established partners including the Fred Hollows Foundation and Oxfam.

Footprints founder, Simon Monk, says the application has the potential to become the CSR vehicle of choice for companies worldwide. "With billions of dollars of e-commerce transactions occurring every day, a really small donation from enough people does make an enormous difference. We hope to inspire a broad network of e-commerce companies to get involved."

The Footprints application itself is a series of API's that allow partners to integrate the program and then collate the thousands of tiny donations - which can be an a variety of currencies - reports on the transactions, calculating the exchange rates, and automates the invoicing of the e-commerce partners. The community projects can be unique to a participating business or shared with others.

With 100 per cent of funds raised going to chosen project, when a project is fully funded, project partners are supplied with a detailed statement of who donated the money, how much and in what currency, providing a level of transparency and creating an opportunity for partners to re-connect with -- and reward -- their customers.

For further information on the Footprints Network and how to integrate it, visit Footprints or contact Simon Monk at simonm (at) worldnomads.com.

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