A Charity Tax: Charity Fund Raising Machine #2

If Substack helps us all become heroes, they should be compensated for that.

The point of the Writers As Heroes project is to help inspire the addition of a charitable giving component to the Substack experience. Ideally, working together, we Substackers will create an ongoing, permanent charity fund raising machine that will have the following properties.

• Raise hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for charity.

• Be largely automated.

• Cost us close to nothing.

Charity Tax

What if every Substack account that is earning money was required to pay a $1 per month charity tax? The funds raised would be forwarded on to good causes chosen by Substack leadership.

Affordable

First, such a modest tax would clearly be affordable for anyone who is at all serious about blogging. $1 per month is three and a half cents per day, and that’s pretty darn close to nothing.

If a person truly can’t afford to donate $1 per month to hungry children, they shouldn’t be blogging. They should instead find more reliable employment, and/or apply for welfare.

Saves Resources

There are likely a great number of dead blogs on Substack that people signed up for only because accounts here are free. The wandered in one day, created an account, got bored in 20 minutes, and wandered off never to be seen again. A very modest $1 fee would prevent most of these folks from consuming Substack resources that they aren’t benefiting from.

Unite The Community

In such a system every blogger on Substack would be contributing to a community wide project of assisting those far less fortunate than ourselves. We’d all be in it together, everybody would be contributing the same amount, and nobody would be carrying an unfair burden.

Automation

Once such a system was in place the billing could be largely automated, just as is true already for Substack subscription payments, and other types of ongoing subscriptions all over the Net.

However, establishing and managing such a billing system would not be fully automated, and would require some work by Substack employees. So in order to create such an ongoing charity fund raising machine we need to find a way to make it realistic for Substack the company to take on this additional burden.

10% Management Fee For Substack

As best I can tell, the solution is pretty straightforward. Just as Substack already takes a 10% cut of all earnings from Substack subscriptions, Substack could also take a 10% cut of the money generated by the charity fund raising machine too. It’s a money management fee, just like we’d pay our bank or a stockbroker etc.

(By the way, here’s an actual totally fake photo of what the Substack charity fund raising machine might look like in the basement of Substack corporate headquarters. Wow, impressive!)

How Does This Work Exactly?

Here’s the best math I have at the moment.

It’s been reported that there are 17,000 Substack blogs which are earning money from subscriptions. Wow, that’s pretty great!

If each of these accounts were billed a $1 per month charity tax, the math for the charity money machine looks something like this:

(17,000 accounts) X ($1 per month) X (12 months)  = $204,000 per year total income

If Substack took a 10% management fee for the work they’ll have to do to keep the charity fund raising machine running smoothly, the math then looks like this.

Substack Earnings:  ($204,000 per year) X (10%) = $20,400 per year for Substack

Charity Funds:  ($204,000 per year) - ($20,400) = $183,600 per year for charity

So, both Substack and the charity machine do pretty well!

Bottom Line:

• Substack gets a new source of income.

• People in trouble get some help.

• It costs us close to nothing.

• We get to be heroes.

• All of our brands get enhanced.

• Positive media stories are generated, bringing in new readers and subscribers.

Disclaimer

Please note, these numbers are just my best guess based on the limited information I currently have. These are not official final numbers, but only a quick sketch of what may be possible. If anybody reading this should have more accurate or more current numbers, please share!

And, What About This?

In my opinion, a $1 per month charity tax on ALL Substack accounts would be reasonable, given that $1 per month for the best blogging service on the Net is way more than a reasonable deal. Were this to happen, the amount of money generated for Substack and charity would be a great deal more than what I’ve projected above.

But, for now at least, I’m leaving the Substack blogs that don’t earn money from subscriptions out of my calculations, because I have no idea how many such accounts there are.

Controversial?

Sure, any plan which is large enough to make a difference is going to be controversial with somebody. Were such a charity tax proposed and implemented, there would likely be discussion of it across Substack, with many of us wishing to play the ever popular Internet game called “here’s what’s wrong with that”.

That’s fine, discussion is good. New useful ideas might come from it. So long as we’re feeding hungry kids while we’re exploring our options for doing so, discussion and debate is great.

Here’s How You Can Help

If you’d like to see something along the lines of the above actually happen, it would be really helpful if you could share your ideas about this on your own blog. Writers As Heroes is meant to be a community project, not just my own personal blog.

Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way

I’m convinced that if we want a charity fund raising machine to be built here on Substack, and we make that clear to Substack the company and our friends, it will happen. Substack the company has always been very focused on providing us with the services that we value.

But, gentle reminder, we do have to want it, and we do have to say so. Waiting quietly for someone else to do something won’t get the job done.

Thanks as always for investing your time in helping to make this happen. I can’t wait to be heroes with all my friends on Substack.