More on Pink Ribbon

After the minor hubbub over a recent post about the Pink Ribbon Toolbar, I spoke to one of the developers, Matt Adkisson, to clear up some of the questions surrounding this application. The app provides a downloadable toolbar. Using this toolbar creates cash flow which the developers donate to breast cancer research in partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure. However, several people have questioned how much of the money actually goes towards research, and how the funds are being raised.

Here’s what Matt told me:

Q: How did this app get started?

Matt: We started as a non-profit research project based out of MIT in Boston. We were funded/subsidized by MIT at first. My mother is a cancer survivor; other co-founders also had close friends and family members affected by cancer.

Q: Some people have suggested that the application raises money by tracking and selling browsing data. Is this true?

Matt: We don’t track (and therefore couldn’t sell) any browsing data, which, of course, leads to the question - how do we make money?

We have a broad-based partnership with Internet search engine Yahoo!. Yahoo! powers the search box on the toolbar and when users search they raise funds for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Also, we have affiliate partnerships with several online stores that donate a percentage of purchases made.

Since funds are raised every time a user searches or shops at a featured store, we have created a revenue stream, rather than simply a one-time donation, for Komen. The net present value of the revenue stream to Komen, as of today, exceeds one million dollars.

Q: What percentage of your profits actually goes to breast cancer research?

Matt: The exact percentage we donate varies month-to-month to comply with tax issues. As a strict rule, we donate more money to the Susan G. Komen Foundation than we keep in profit. Currently, we don’t make any profit at all; we are barely break-even and that’s without any salaries for employees who donate their time. Facebook applications with millions of users are very expensive to maintain.

With Pink Ribbon, we did stumble upon a fantastic way to monetize Facebook applications. We see browser toolbars as the most effective way for Facebook application developers to monetize their applications. We have the ability to make completely customized toolbars for other developers who are interested. Please tell any developers who are interested in this to reach out to me at madkisso at mit dot edu.

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