Introducing 1% of Nothing

I am personally not a fan of businesses giving money to charity. If they have spare cash, they should give it to their employees (who in a normal business are mainly responsible for the cash surplus) as a bonus - those employees can themselves donate their earning to a charity of their choice, rather than having the company inflict a charity on them.

A sudden burst of donation for a philanthropic organisations isn't necessarily as useful. They would rather be happy with a constant stream of money to build their efforts and to be able to plan for things. So dividends work out very well I guess.<p>Yet given this is one feasible way for startups (who can't take out dividends) to engage in philanthropy kudos to the team and idea.

Can we have a list of startups that are doing this? Quixey would be on it, and I'm pretty sure there's one or two others I've heard of, but I don't remember offhand.

Does anyone have more information about this? Saw this last year, thought it was a cool idea (with a great name!), haven't heard a peep since.<p>It's like asking frequent lottery ticket buyers to promise 1% of their future winnings for charity. Easy sell, though most people would probably end up giving that much anyway. It should be 10% of nothing, really...

Maybe it's just me but when I first saw the name I thought it had something to do with Occupy Wall Street. I like the concept but maybe "1 percent" has been tainted?

How is this better than personally donating a % of your earnings after your start up gets acquired? Does donating as a business rather than an individual hold any additional benefits?

I think it's a very good idea. Not only people can donate, but now startups can too.

I'm not sure I see the value in pledging 1% before the startup is worth anything (as opposed to asking for donations after the company is worth something).<p>Can someone explain it to me?

Charity is very clearly the domain of rich guys winding down their careers and/or trying to buy their way into heaven. It would be a total distraction for someone in his prime.

What do your investors or board think about you removing 1% of the company's equity from play?<p>(this is another reason why I don't like engineers getting paid in equity - that limits the availiable equity pool for investors to buy, baring share dilution.)

<p><pre><code> They’ve now since used that donation and through smart investing, our involvement had a hand in pushing forward a proposition that would increase funding for “at risk” schools in Colorado by $5m forever </code></pre> This is presented as if it is unambiguously a good thing. Phrased in a less complimentary way, the nonprofit spent a significant amount of money on political lobbying to get the taxpayer to involuntarily fork over $5M/year to a cause the original guy supported ("at risk" schools).<p>Some people think that schools for the gifted are more necessary than schools for the "at risk", and that for profits that build real products create far more value for society than nonprofits. If you are one of these people, you will take that 1% and use it to invest in self-sustaining businesses rather than on permanently dependent nonprofits.