Donate To Your Favorite Artist Via HumanFankind

HumanFankind is an interesting concept for a web service with a potentially difficult road ahead. The basic idea is that HumanFankind facilitates fans donating to their favorite artists while sending them an optional message. HumanFankind routes the donation through their PayPal account and then promises to pass it on to the artist along with your message. It plays off anger towards major labels and the growing recognition that even fans who download lots of free music often want an easy way to support artists. The problem is, Humankind does not establish itself as a trusted vehicle for such donations.

I like the idea of HumanFankind. It's an interesting experiment at a time when fresh thinking is needed. While donations are nothing new, musicians working outside of the nonprofit sector do not traditionally seek them. And, instead of artists asking directly for donations, having a third party that presents themselves as music fans facilitating the process somehow feels more appropriate.

HumanFankind's site is well designed. The process of donating is easy. They say the right things from claiming status as big music fans to decrying the percentage artists make on their music. They even have bloggers who post about freely available music from a variety of acts.

The problem with HumanFankind is that there's no way to verify that the donations or messages actually go to the artists and the only assurance given is in the FAQ that answers the question, "How do I know that this money is actually going to the artist?," with the response:

"Because if it did not, we would be in jail. We support artists as much as you do, so if you donate money it will make it to the artist. We send it to their rep or assigned person and it goes directly to them, not their agents, and not their record labels! It goes right to the person who earned it, the artist!"

And, honestly, that's about as good as it gets. More importantly, the "We" is not identified on the site. There are various ways to contact HumanFankind but individuals are not identified and no address is given. Some of the bloggers are identified but they are described as volunteers otherwise unassociated with the site.

The only public identifying info regarding who's behind HumanFankind is the domain registration that identifies Jay Silverman of Pennsylvania and a LinkedIn account for Justin Silverman, president at Human Fankind, also of Pennsylvania.

Now I'm not saying this is a scam. I'm just saying that HumanFankind has done a poor job of providing the info necessary to establish trust. The fact that the domain registration isn't hidden is good but, beyond that, there's nothing solid for the general public.

A good first step for HumanFankind to establish more credibility would be to identify who's behind the site and include a physical address and phone number for direct contact. Finding artists who will cosign and verify that they've received donations would be helpful, especially given that the quotes by well-known artists on the donation page appear to be endorsements until one takes a closer look.

That leaves the problem of lack of financial transparency. To be perfectly frank, HumanFankind needs to find a way to open their books in the sense of revealing how much has been taken in, how much has been donated and which artists got what.

Until that point, I would not suggest donating.

Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and blogs at All World Dance and This Business of Blogging. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.