Are ads on YouTube asking donations for sick children via drove.com a scam?

Drove is an eCommerce platform, not a crowdfunding platform. They provide payment processing services for all kinds of customers. They are just the middle-man, not the organization actually asking for and receiving the donations.

So the question is not whether Drove is a scam, it's whether the organization placing those ads is a scam. Your question does not contain enough information to tell what organization actually places those ads. But when it's difficult for you to find out, then that's a red flag.

There are a lot of charities doing very good work with donations, but there are also a couple bad apples who only collect money for themselves. So I would advise anyone intending to donate money to do due diligence and do some research to find out if the organizations they donate to actually use the money for the purposes they claim they use them for. Reputable organizations will usually be transparent about how much money they spend on advertisement, how much they spend on administration of their organization and how much money is actually spent on their cause.

The assumption that you should make with any sort of ad like this is that it is a scam.

Why?

Because if you want to donate money to children in need there are numerous charities that offer a high return on your money.

Why is this one bad?

In general a "good" charity will post lots of information about how they spend your money or have links to their website that does. Also good charities tend not to use middlemen (Drove) as that takes away from the percentage or proceedings that go to the needy.

What is a good charity?

A good charity is one that effectively uses your money. There are lots of charities that are not scams that have a very low percentage of your money going to the needy - these charities spend too much on ads, administration, and marketing leads. Basically there are non-profits that are very profitable if you work for them. Good charities will have people possibly making a lot of money but they should still be allocating at least 2/3s to their needy. The Red Cross for example is around 90%.

In my opinion - and it isn't universal - is that if you aren't hitting 2/3s of the money mark your charity is either not needed (needs too much advertisement) or it is a scam to make huge profits for the people that work for it. No matter how nice the charity is.

How about the children?

The children in the video don't matter - well they do - but not for your donations. The children and their story has nothing to do with what the charity actionably does with your money. If those children were fake, but they used your money to help children is that bad? Or, would you rather have those children in the video be really dying or having serious issues, but only 20% of your money goes to them while charity CEO is cruising in his beamer?

How do I get more info?

I would use a site like https://www.charitynavigator.org/ to help get data to evaluate the charity in question. There are several other sites that do charity evaluations too. Note that these sites do not get a perfect set of data and a lot of times rely on tax records (that can be how should we say it... swayed with grey accounting) but they are a good start.

Don't all companies need a middleman to take care of payments?

Well kind of. I would never put Stripe, Paypal, AMEX, Visa, and so on as "middlemen". They are simply payment processing mechanisms. They don't really provide a service other than helping transfer funds. Yes this is normal.

What are sites like Drove?

Drove is a gofundme page for businesses. It makes me almost sick that as a society we are OK with this. Not only are they monetizing their customers but their customers are monetizing an industry rampant with lies, fraud, and scams. Looking at their basic info they charge 2.9% per transaction + .30 - it might seem slightly more than the companies listed above but an extra .5% on millions of dollars is a big big deal. This is well above industry average for processing fees.

But wait. That doesn't even cover their 5% platform fee. So every company pays 5% on every transaction. No way in the world a good, well-organized charity lets another company skim 5% of their money plus have access to their user data via API. You think the Red Cross wants to share who donated to it to 5000 other charities (no way)? I hate to be mean and generalize - but platforms like Drove are meant to sucker people into donating and suckering the same people over and over by sharing user data in its API. Read its website, it tells you all of this in a "nice way".

I'm pretty sure ads seen on Youtube and Facebook are fraudulent

Let's start from ads.

Youtube channels they use:

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSUetMCrhluSXAosJdpMfOQ
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ8-HFMVk5o1Qpbpp8-XQ4Q
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfEurRKF4zbdejjJfwFwD5Q

Lots of the ads you see are created by this company: https://turbodigital.co.il/en/home-page-2/ which partners with middlemen: drove.com, givestart.org and others (the ones you see listed in the ads).

Interesting fact is that ads point to give.rachasheilev-fund.org and israelcancercenters.org while the official (legit?) site is rachasheilev.org (at least it lists contact details, has board of directors and provides certificates).

Same with Facebook. Official is https://www.facebook.com/rachasheilev/, linked from the ads: https://www.facebook.com/rachasheilevisrael/

The people behind israelcancercenters are https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/detailsPage?ein=200379354&name=Friends%20of%20Rachashei%20Lev-Whispers%20of%20the%20Heart&city=Teaneck&state=NJ&countryAbbr=US&dba=&type=CHARITIES,%20COPYOFRETURNS&orgTags=CHARITIES&orgTags=COPYOFRETURNS

Drove is sketchy as the website is unfinished (half russian/half english) for a business product, company executives are not listed, where is license to operate as payment collector?, etc... Givestart is even worse. Basically, you would be sending your money to some blackhole acc.

I made an impression that all these ads are an elaborate scam to use known? charity name in order to extract money from unsuspecting people for not so known charity with a similar name.

Cancer fraud is common: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/business/4-cancer-charities-accused-in-ftc-fraud-case.html

The most strange aspect in the whole story, the real Rachashei Lev organization (https://www.facebook.com/rachasheilev/) , is located in Israel, but the campaign version of Rachashei Lev (https://www.facebook.com/rachasheilevisrael/) is located in the USA. That appears very strange indeed!