Comments for Is FreeRice.com making $150k each day in profits?

Its nice to donate few grains, but here is how you could make a real difference - Join the FaceBook group
Free Rice Helpers where you could download a small program that answers the questions for you! Just run it and watch your pile of rice growing. It even "presses" the ads links once in while so everyone will be happy :) Dont forget to spread the word - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7357688972

Don't you think you could have asked Mr. Breen before getting this blog started? Why waste time with "what ifs"?

The reason I searched this out is because it just sounds too good to be true - like one of the countless internet urban legends. As a school teacher, I have encouraged my students to go to this site and I would hate to be "duped" into the hysteria. I totally agree that the idea is worthy. I just want to make sure that my students don't get turned off of charity because of someone being unscrupulous. One of my students was so proud that she had been responsible for donating over 4,000 grains of rice - on her own time at home. Thanks for this site. To paraphrase the X-files..."The truth is out there." So, please keep digging.

These people must get so sick of rice.

Delivery Guy: Parcel for 'Umbatoonga'?
Poor Person: It's not rice again, is it?

That quote from above does not mean Breen is not keeping a lot of money.

This matters because it brings up the issue of transparency. When you buy food you want to know whether it has poison in it. The same concept applies to charity.

If my math is not wrong, one billion grains at 50,000 grains per kilogram gives 20,000 kg, or 20 tons, of rice. At $309 per ton, we're not talking a lot of money given away. Even with shipping taken into account. I suppose something is better than nothing.

If the UN is responsible for over 15 million refugees, and probably gives food aid to even more, then while feeding 50,000 people for a day sounds impressive (my grandmother would say it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick), it is a drop in the bucket. So hopefully people who click on freerice.com don't limit their donations to that. Most of us can and should give more, and give to registered charities who must account for what they're doing and keep admin costs low.

Just my 2 cents.

I quite like the Freerice.com charity game and agree with one of the posters here, in that I doubt that more than just a few people are clicking on the advertising licks generating revenue. Even so, at least this group spends dollars generated on helping to fund the World Food Program with more dollars for food-stuffs. The site itself offers a direct link from the FAQ page to an end-hunger campaign petition.

To think that the age of the internet may actually enable us to put another major dent in feeding the world's hungry gives me such a tremendous sense of hope and satisfaction. Perhaps despite our present geo-political conflicts, ideas like free.com are just the tip of the iceberg for an ineluctable future of innovative opportunities to make a difference. Has someone thought of contacting Moira Gunn (sp?) from Tech-Nation? Some investigative reporting on this would make for a very interesting story!!
I would love to see NPR or the BBC pay attention to something like this.

Last note: As a future grad school student... I'm loving the game-aspect a lot... I think the vocabulary is apropos for the GRE.

I hope that the owner of pcspy.com will be handing to charity over any increased revenues due to the increased site visits following on from this (totally barmy) piece of speculation.