When the Japan earthquake hit last week I had several people reach out and ask if Garrett and I were planning to do a second Indie+Relief to help those out in Japan much in the way we helped Haiti. It was incredibly flattering that people enjoyed the Indie+Relief experience so much that they wanted to offer to help without any prodding.
For a variety of reasons, we decided to not do it. Scheduling and time commitments were part of it, but the overarching reason was that after last year’s event companies were more than capable of handling charitable campaigns for their customers on their own.
Indie+Relief was one of those instances where everything fell into place at the right time and struck a nerve just perfectly. Beyond raising a ton of money, I think it also showed Mac and iOS developers that giving feels good. I hoped that it would serve as a good guide for how to do charity without looking like it is a marketing stunt.
It looks like that turned out to be right.
- Panic will donate 100% of proceeds from 10:00 AM PST March 17th to 10:00 AM PST March 18th directly to the Japanese relief effort.
- MarketCircle will donate 100% of its proceeds for Billings from Monday March 21st to Wednesday March 23rd.
- Macworld has a list of other smaller companies that are doing similar promotions. My favorites will always be the ones who donate 100% of the proceeds. Anything else feels too much like a marketing campaign to boost sales.
I’ll update this post with other companies I come across that are donating 100% of their proceeds for a day or two to Japan relief funds.