Your organization can share in revenue by creating listings in our Directory. Our system supports an affiliate program of structured sponsorship with progressive rewards.

Local and regional publications or organizations can participate. Affiliates add listings to the Directory as rewards for donations and can optionally earn creative fees associated with the listing. (Creative fees may include graphic design, image processing, text composition and WWW formatting.

Our system supports an affiliate program of structured sponsorship with progressive rewards.

By default there are three levels of sponsorship for an affiliated organization, identified as Neighbors, Friends and Heroes. You can also relabel the levels to suit your organization's goals.

At the (1) Neighbor level, each sponsor is rewarded with a listing in the directory, which is a superset that also contains the sponsor directory of the affiliate. Your sponsor's information appears in your own directory and in the global directory and is searchable in both. We suggest a minimum donation of $10 monthly or $100 annually to your organization, but you can set your threshold donations at any level.

At the (2) Friend level, a sponsor is rewarded with Neighbor benefits plus a banner that appears randomly on pages of the directory. Banners may accompany search results if the criteria of the sponsor match the criteria of the search query, or if unmatched randomly on directory pages. We suggest a minimum donation of at least five times the amount of the Neighbor level ($500).

At the (3) Hero level, the sponsor is rewarded with all the Friend benefits, plus inclusion of the Friends banner in a set of graphical links on the Directory's home/search page, with eligibility limited to the top ten percent of donors by dollar amount. We suggest a minimum donation of ten times that of the Neighbor level ($1,000), PLUS potential service fees for copywriting and graphics if requested by sponsor.

As a very simple example, imagine a community of sponsors of 1,000 local businesses and organizations. If all donate $100, one quarter (250) upgrade to Level 2 ($500) and one tenth (100) upgrade to Level 3 ($1000), then the total annual donations will be $290,000.

IMPLEMENTATION AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT: We charge $2,500 one time plus one-quarter of receipts from listings and upgrades, minimum $100 per month which is your affiliate fee, to initialize and maintain the service. We work with you to refine the general model to serve your communbity. In the simplified example, after subtracting our fees, the affiliate could earn $217,500 (75% X $290,000) in its first year.

Of course, you should create your own estimate based on local factors. Multiply through the actual Neighbors level in your donation structure to see the actual potential in your community.

The copy (text) and graphical banners are either provided to our specification by the sponsor, or the affiliate may offer (work with) a local design service or refer the design to our team for an additional donation.

We can adapt the overall appearance of your directory to match that of your other web-based content or with your print or TV presentations.

IMPORTANT: Design and content-creation (text & graphics) fees are yours to keep! You can set them yourself according to local market conditions and your supporters' ability to pay.

Content is managed using the system's Editing Suite, which is composed a set of forms that maintain a database. The editor can simply copy and paste text or links. Images are uploaded from the editor's desktop computer. Minor edits can be accomplished from small devices (telephones), but for general development, editing and maintenance we recommend the use of a desktop computer.

The public view of the system, the Directory itself, is adaptable to many languages. In addition, third-party translation is increasingly available, e.g., Google Translate supports over 100 languages, and Mac Safari a similar number..

The "back room" of the system, which we call the Editing Suite, uses English, which is the default language of the WWW. We encourage the development of local glossaries to help your designers and editors, and we can assist to some extent.

Who benefits?

The affiliate earns donations (and possibly service fees).

The donors earn the gratitude of the affiliate and receive publicity both directly and by being indexed in search engines*

Who may be an affiliate?

We offer the service to news outlets, small businesses, religious groups, community organizations and others, whether for-profit or non-profit.

How do we know it's working?

Links to the Directory are tallied, so the sponsor and the organization can gauge the effectiveness of the program.

Who else has such programs?

The concept has been used by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations across the US to build community support. Stations typically contract with an organizer like us to manage the logistics, and their donor rewards are typically books, videos, and attendance at special events.

Couldn't I just copy the idea?

Possibly, but by participating in our system, your supporters can have the option of also appearing in other regional and community directories, giving them greatly extended reach for their publicity. That kid at the local college who's whispering in your ear probably cannot do the same.

Amateurs are not professionals.