Jamie began his work on the Ethical Sellers website during his spare time and it’s taken over a year to complete. His system has over 3 million charities and half a million online sellers. We asked him why he started this huge project.
He said “I wanted to give people the power to find online stores that were aligned with their ethical values. I believe if there is a problem that needs solving, putting pressure on businesses to also solve that problem is a great way to make the world a better place. We can put pressure on those businesses by only buying from the ones that are supporting charities and causes we care about. If we can force businesses to focus on more than just profit the world would be a much better place. Very few people can easily donate $1000 to a charity however for many businesses that’s a tiny amount of money. I’d like to encourage this type of support for charities/non-profits and reward those businesses with new customers coming from my website.”
We asked if he could tell us a little more about how his website works.
He said “Sure, I know not everyone is a massive geek like me so I’ll try and keep this as jargon free as possible. I’ve built a huge database of over 3 million charities and non-profits. I’ve also built a huge database of over half a million online sellers, so that’s e-commerce websites. My website looks at each of these half a million online sellers and checks every blog post, event summary, press release etc they have and sees if they are linking to any of the 3 million charities in my database. If they are linking to them, I then try to check why they are linking to them. Is it because they’ve donated to them? Are they selling items and the money goes to that charity? My website tries to work all this out.”
We asked him what’s in it for him?
He said “What’s in it for me? Nothing at all right now. I’m actually losing money paying for website hosting and so on. I hope one day I’ll be able to turn it into a business somehow. One thing I know is that it will always stay free because helping people find sellers that support what they care about is my primary goal for the foreseeable future.”
We asked him what’s been the most challenging part of this project so far.
He said “I think the most challenging part of this project so far has been making the system accurate. There are a lot of online sellers that quote charities and link to them but don’t actually really help them in any way. Filtering them out was a little tricky but I’ve sorted that now. Something else I initially struggled with was the belief in what I was doing. I just kept thinking… is this a really stupid idea? But then once a few people started telling me how much they loved what I was doing it gave me the drive I needed to get the project to where it is today. Even if I only help a handful of people find ethical sellers it’s worth it.”
If you’d like to try out Ethical Sellers and find online sellers that are supporting the charities and non-profits you care about please check out their store search option here https://ethicalsellers.org/search-for-ethical-online-stores
Media Contact
Company Name: Ethical Sellers
Contact Person: Jamie Evans
Email: Send Email
Phone: 07837957946
Address:207 Regent Street
City: London W1B 9TP
Country: United Kingdom
Website: https://ethicalsellers.org