MassiveGood, a global fundraising campaign backed by a string of travel companies and celebrities, has raised less than a quarter of a million dollars in six months.
Figures indicate that consumers have donated $200,000 via the scheme since it started operations ("fully active") in June 2010, following its high-profile launch earlier in the year.
MassiveGood has actually was first mooted in September 2009, but the first donations were taken in March this year.
The scheme is supported by no less a names than ex-US president Bill Clinton, director Spike Lee, actors Samuel L Jackson and Susan Sarandon and, in the travel industry, the trio of global distribution systems, Amadeus, Travelport and Sabre Holdings, with Travelocity and Accor Hotels.
At the centre of the MassiveGood project is a scheme to persuade travellers to donate $2 for every flight, hotel or car rental booking they make, facilitated by a button which appears in the booking path of travel websites in the US.
It has since been made available on Spanish travel sites.
In order to do this, MassiveGood enlisted the help of the three GDSs, led by Amadeus which was charged with building the technology required to take donations on partner sites. Sabre and Travelport agreed to use the technology to enable them to receive funds.
It has now emerged that the MassiveGood scheme used $11 million to get off the ground. This is called "seed funding", according to the Millennium Foundation, the organisation behind MassiveGood.
The investment was used in variety of ways, an official says:
"These funds were used to create the donation technology with our partner Amadeus, which works flawlessly, as well as everything else necessary to create the Millennium Foundation (legal structure, communications tools like the website etc)."
Responding to further questions around the cost of the new technology to help get donations from travel sites, the official adds:
"I am not able to put a figure to the amount nor the total value (a large part of it was done on a pro bono basis, as any development done with our partners). I can however confirm that it was perfectly well done. The MassiveGood technology has worked flawlessly from the start and it passed the PCI Data Security Standards by the credit card industry."
An Amadeus official says:
"MassiveGood is one of our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects. We have indeed worked with the Millenium Foundation to support the launch of MassiveGood with our technology and experience in the travel industry.
"We believe the project is based on the sound principles of supporting the fight against life-threatening diseases and, ultimately, saving lives. We are paying close attention to the evolution of the project."
MassiveGood this week launches a new effort to attract donations from Spain. The project, in collaboration with the International Red Cross, is called Niños sin Malaria and is aimed at raising funds to help treat malaria in refugee camps in Tanzania and Ghana.
An official says the scheme "will reach the goals we've set for amount raised after a full year of activity (June 2011), thanks to targeted campaigns like Niños sin Malaria, and our corporate program, in line with the business model on which MassiveGood was based".
"The GDS are important partners: they are vital for reservation purchase (and therefore, for us, donation), but also they have facilitated many of the relationships we have now with agencies and partners both online and offline. But this obviously takes time.
"So while we are continuously getting more partners, we always knew that it would be a ramp-up process that increases as MassiveGood becomes more known."
MassiveGood says the online partners are attracting more donations but the offline donors are, on average, giving more - around $7. Meanwhile, online outlets in Spain, for example, have around a 1% donation rate on reservations.
Nevertheless, "a good return on investment is raising as much as possible to help save as many lives as possible," the official adds.
NB: Editor's note - Tnooz is keen to support initiatives across the industry (especially those that have cross-business support) that raise funds for good causes. MassiveGood has a worthy remit and has done well to bring together such usually bitter rivals as the GDSs. Our motivation for investigating MassiveGood is simply due to question marks that have emerged in recent months over the investment required to get the project off the ground and the volume of donations obtained since. Tnooz continues to wish the project well in the coming months.