Traditionally companies sell a product in return for a fixed amount of money, also known as the Product Sales business model. This transaction is shown on the top of the model above. Companies can add a third party to this business system for different reasons. One of the reasons can be to upgrade the company’s value to customers by adding a good cause or charity organisation as third party. The company will then send a small part of the profit (per transaction) to the charity organisation, thereby upgrading its own added value to customers. When this transaction forms a fundamental aspect of the way the company operates, then this is what we call the Charity Upgrading business model. In many other cases though, these charity transactions are just temporary marketing actions built upon the traditional business model.

Charity Upgrading examples

  • College Hunks Hauling Junk: donates a portion of its revenue to College Bound, a nonprofit scholarship program.
  • Bet2Give: a real-money prediction market where participants grow their accounts with investments in predictions about the future, and give their winnings away to non-profit organizations of their choice.
  • The new start-up Oronjo offers a webshop service where each buyer has the option to donate a small amount of money to a charity player of his choice.