'TripAdvisor Causes'

I've been neglecting my blog of late, and there are all sorts of things stacking up in my head that I've been wanting to post about.  For now, here's something that caught my eye this morning.

I noticed that TripAdvisor is donating $1 million to charity and has nominated five organisations that it will split the amount between, 'as determined by the percentage of total votes that each charity receives' from visitors to its site.

You can vote for either, Save the Children, Medecins Sans Frontieres, National Geographic Society, The Nature Conservancy or Conservation International.

Incidentally, their rationale is that they are offsetting some of the effects of the global tourism industry that they've become such a popular part of, through their 'More Than Footprints™ Campaign' or, in their words:

'With over 15 million reviews and opinions from real travellers, TripAdvisor believes in the power of the collective voice.  We also believe that by helping us support these great causes, you can make a difference in your community and the places you visit.'

Once you have voted, if you log back in, you can go back and check TripAdvisor Causes to get an update on what percentage of the overall vote each charity has received -- A nice touch.

You also get the opportunity to invite others to add their vote by using a neat little dashboard with links to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook, and a function that allows you to pull up to 50 of your contacts in from whichever web-based email you use.  Easy!

I couldn't help thinking how clever TripAdvisor is to come up with a CSR offering so well aligned with their user-generated model, and was impressed at how straightforward they have made it for people to share the message (which, of course, is in their interests, since it drives traffic to their site).  Still, it's something a lot of non-profit organisations could learn from.

When I last looked, this was how the vote was panning out, which won't surprise those of you who know about the relative popularity of different types of cause (i.e. environment, children etc):

I think it's a bit of a shame that there aren't clear links from TripAdvisor to any of the charities' home pages -- in some cases no links at all! -- which you would have thought Tripadvisor might have been kind enough to promote and those organisations would have pushed for.  It smacks a little of self-interest on TripAdvisor's part; wanting to keep traffic within their site, or perhaps it's just an oversight?