PND (2/15/2000) -- Charities Have Range of Choices in Online Giving Sites

Web sites promising to assist charities with their online fundraising have proliferated in the past year, leaving nonprofit executives with an almost overwhelming variety of choices, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports.

"I doubt they'll all survive, and who knows which of these is going to turn out to be good or bad?" said Ann Medlock, president of the Giraffe Project, a small charity in Langley, Washington, that has signed up with a number of charity portal sites. "The nice thing is [that on any] of these sites, you can look as good as any of the big organizations. We're hoping people we don't know will find us online and donate."

For many smaller nonprofits and community organizations, signing up with a charity portal is a way to raise money without incurring any costs — an attractive proposition to groups with small staffs and budgets. But there remain legal, competitive, and ethical issues surrounding online fundraising that in turn raise questions about the viability of many portal sites.

Competition from large, well-funded sites probably means some of the smaller fee-based ones will not survive. Charitableway.com, a San Francisco-based donation-solicitation site, for example, recently announced that it will donate 101 percent of the money pledged on the site for an indefinite period. Corporate sponsors are covering Charitableway's operating costs and donating the extra 1 percent to charity. The organization's announcement followed one from AOL-sponsored "Charities Explore Online Giving Sites." Puget Sound Business Journal 1/31/2000.

See also: "Charity Watchdogs Warn of Potential for Online Fraud." Associated Press in New York Times 2/8/2000.

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