Rattling the Tubes

Technology has transformed education and businesses by offering increased efficiencies, providing new channels and in some cases generating entire new areas for research or productisation. Theses changes are finding their way into the not for profit and charity sectors to astounding success.

With a gloomy economic outlook, higher taxes, below inflation pay increases and debts bigger than ever people have less money to spend, yet charity collections, such as this years record breaking Children in Need collection, are doing better than ever - so what (or who) gives? It seems that a new channel for giving, putting charitable causes back int the spotlight, has been emerging over the last few years.

Online fund-raising platforms, such as the popular Just Giving, are making it easier than ever to set up collections for a cause. Not only do these platforms help raise the profile of campaigns, features such as donor lists encourage people to give more after seeing that others have donated to the cause, and how much. By automating the collection of Gift Aid and these platforms claim they are increasing donation to charities even after their fees are taken into account.

Both new and old organisations are helping charities and not-for-profits replace the collection tin with the Internet. Kiva is a community loan project where users can offer money to projects to allow disadvantaged people to fund their businesses and generate their own livelihoods and allowing people to see the individual effects of their contributions - plus the (high) chance of getting repaid. Even eBay has thrown it's hat into the charitable giving arena, allowing charities to receive a percentage of sale prices automatically and encouraging donations on checkout.

Individuals and charities are increasingly looking to the social web for ways to publicise these new methods to donate online. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ can all be used to promote these online fund-raising drives - even blogs...

      So, what of it, kind sir? Can you spare some change?

Cross-posted from cs08jjj on social media