Virtual Foundation Aims to Bring International Philanthropy to the Masses

Supporting overseas projects is an intimidating prospect for many small donors,

who often feel ill-equipped to identify worthy efforts in foreign countries and to insure that their gifts are used wisely.

But for the past four years, the Virtual Foundation has been using the Internet in a pioneering approach to grant making that promises to bring international philanthropy within the reach of nearly any donor.

Linking ordinary citizens around the world into virtual communities that share common concerns is increasingly important at the dawn of a new century that finds a small number of nations and global corporations shaping economies and cultures, the foundation’s champions believe.

The foundation supports grassroots activists in Asia and Eastern and Central Europe by linking them with donors interested in supporting their projects, most of which focus on issues relating to the environment, health, or sustainable development.

Activists who seek financing for projects endorsed by the foundation are permitted to post their requests on the foundation’s World-Wide Web site (http://www.virtualfoundation.org). Prospective donors — who include virtually anyone with access to the Internet — can then search the list for projects that appeal to them.

After identifying such a project, a donor sends the grant money to the foundation’s office in rural Pennsylvania. After the foundation’s board members have approved the grant — a process usually conducted via e-mail, often in a matter of several days — the money goes out to the recipient, who is required to post progress reports on the Web site to keep the donor informed.

To date, more than 70 donors have made grants totaling about $67,000 to 35 such projects, and the Web site lists 83 projects currently seeking support.

“In each case — whether the grant is from a small foundation, a high-school group, an individual, or a church congregation — the idea is to bring philanthropy down from the ethereal clouds of the multibillionaires, back down to the people,” says Randy Kritkausky, president of a grassroots environmental group called Ecologia, which operates the Virtual Foundation as one of its own projects.

To screen proposals, develop strong candidates for financing, and monitor grantees’ performance, the Virtual Foundation relies on a network of activist groups in various regions with which Ecologia has developed close ties. Members of the Virtual Foundation Consortium, as the network is called, now include the Baikal Center, in Russia; Green Earth Volunteers, in China; the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe, in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic; and the Himalayan Light Foundation, in Nepal.

Consortium members act in some ways like program officers, helping grant seekers put together their proposals and forwarding them to the Virtual Foundation for consideration by the thousands of potential donors who visit the Web site each month.

The aggregate knowledge and contacts that consortium members have acquired in a score of countries, Mr. Kritkausky observes, enable his foundation to “provide the kind of infrastructure that only the largest foundations can afford” while keeping costs very manageable. Ten per cent of each grant goes to cover overhead expenses, and is split equally between the Virtual Foundation and the respective consortium member in the region.

Though the grants are small — ranging from about $100 to $5,000 — they can make a big difference to both donor and recipient.

An Episcopalian congregation near Scranton, Pa., for example, gave $825 to finance a project in which Beijing schoolchildren grow seedlings to be transplanted in denuded parts of China. That success led to several follow-up gifts by the Church of the Epiphany, and some church members are now planning a trip to visit the project.

“The Virtual Foundation is asking people to share their wealth,” notes Mr. Kritkausky. “But in exchange for their donation to a project, we’re helping them to develop a personal connection with the group they’re donating to.”

On-line progress reports are one way of keeping donors interested in their projects, he says, but many donors go further by developing an e-mail correspondence with the group they are helping.

“People who never gave internationally before are experimenting with a small amount — maybe several hundred dollars to start — and then coming back again and again” to make additional donations, he says.

Donors are as varied as the projects they support. One was a Model United Nations club at a high school in central New York State, for example, which raised $1,000 to help clean up a lake in Kazakhstan. Another was a physician at a major pharmaceutical company who donated $1,900 to equip a diabetes-prevention program in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. A matching gift from his employer doubled the grant amount.

Keeping the projects small directs the support to the kinds of local grassroots organizations that Ecologia is committed to helping. What’s more, Mr. Kritkausky adds, donors feel a stronger connection to a project when they are its sole financial sponsor rather than merely one of dozens or hundreds of supporters.

“We’re finding that the sense of ownership a donor has toward an entire project is a large part of the success,” he says.

Several American foundations have encouraged the development of the Virtual Foundation. About $140,000 in initial support has come from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Turner Foundation.

The Virtual Foundation may expand its network of consortium members into other regions, perhaps including countries in Africa or Latin America, but it does not seek to spread its reach to every corner of the world, says Mr. Kritkausky. Instead, it has endorsed the creation of similar organizations in other countries. The Virtual Foundation Japan is now up and running, and a similar group is being organized in the Czech Republic.

Advanced communications technology is what has made it possible for a group in Nepal to apply for funds for a local reforestation project, have its request endorsed within a week by Virtual Foundation board members scattered around the world, and find a donor who is interested in supporting it.

But at a time when many non-profit officials are looking to the Internet chiefly as a way of raising money more efficiently, Mr. Kritkausky believes that its primary benefit is its ability to bring people together across vast distances and cultural divides.

“I hope the Virtual Foundation would help to accomplish what was the great promise of the Internet: that it would become a global community,” he says. “A community is a place where friends help friends, neighbors help neighbors — and where people halfway around the world who don’t speak our language can become our neighbors.”