Online Newsletters Offer Technology Advice
By NICOLE WALLACESeveral new electronic newsletters offer charities free advice about how to use information technology in their work and in their fund raising. Published monthly by two nonprofit technology consultants, Marc Osten and Michael Stein, Dot Org offers charities advice on how to use…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Bay Area Collaboration to Help Charities
By NICOLE WALLACECompuMentor and the Management Center, two San Francisco organizations that provide technology assistance to other nonprofit groups, have announced a partnership in which they will work together to help charities develop and carry out strategic technology plans. Each organization…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Charity’s Antismoking Site Turns For-Profit
By NICOLE WALLACEA Boston public-health charity is spinning off its online smoking-prevention program as a for-profit company. Since its creation in 1995, QuitNet has provided information and support to people who are trying to break their dependence on nicotine. The site was started as a project…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Bits: Awards Program Suspended; Dot-Com Philanthropy Ventures Parodied
By NICOLE WALLACE On April 2, Ericsson, a Stockholm telecommunications company, announced the third annual Ericsson Internet Community Awards, or ERICA, which were to have awarded $500,000 in Web development services and equipment to charities with innovative technology ideas. But the program has…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Foundations Urge Creation of ‘Digital Trust’
By NICOLE WALLACEA new report calls for the creation of a national trust to promote the innovative use of information technology in education. “A Digital Gift to the Nation,” published by the Century Foundation, recommends that the federal government use the proceeds from the auction of the…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Civic-Action Groups Benefit From Dot-Com Decline
By NICOLE WALLACEElection season may be over, but the deal making hasn’t slowed for organizations that use the Internet to educate voters and encourage citizens to participate in the political process. Two charities have been the beneficiaries of failed dot-com political portals, and two others…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
California Provides Data on Electronic Drives
By HARVY LIPMANCalifornia’s annual report on commercial solicitors for the first time this year provides information on Internet fund-raising campaigns. The report lists 66 online campaigns, all conducted by Charitableway, an Internet fund-raising company, in San Carlos, Calif., that recently…
By Harvy Lipman
Contributor
Environmental Groups Offered Internet Tools
By NICOLE WALLACEA new organization is building Internet-based tools to help environmental organizations work together to improve their communications efforts. Green Media Toolshed, in Washington, provides its members with a directory of more than 230,000 press contacts in the United States and…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
New Online Option for United Ways
By NICOLE WALLACEA consortium of local United Ways has entered the electronic workplace-giving fray. For the forthcoming fall campaign season, participating United Ways will be able to use the United eWay.org system to work with companies to design customized Web sites that employees can use to…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Charity Advocates Put the Web to Work
By NICOLE WALLACEFor several years charities have been using the Internet in their advocacy work on causes like the environment and human rights. Now a coalition of organizations is harnessing the power of the Internet on behalf of policy issues that affect the nonprofit world. A project of…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
By NICOLE WALLACEPeninsula Habitat for Humanity is looking to provide low-income families with homes on the information superhighway. Working with Cisco Systems, the Menlo Park, Calif., chapter of Habitat for Humanity is wiring 36 town houses it is building in Redwood City for high-speed access to…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Online Companies Merge Operations
By NICOLE WALLACEThe consolidation of companies that specialize in helping charities use the Internet is continuing. In recent months, a number of online-giving companies have gone out of business -- most notably Charitableway -- and several giving portals, including CharityCounts and…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Bits: Software-Donation Program; Virus Vaccination Day
By NICOLE WALLACE The Microsoft Corporation will be accepting applications for its Technology Leadership Grant program through April 2. Since 1997, the program has awarded Microsoft software to help large nonprofit groups improve their communications and operations and to use the Internet to…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Spontaneous Campaign Reaps Charity Windfall
By NICOLE WALLACEPropelled by the Internet, a spontaneous fund-raising campaign raised more than $600,000 for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates. In the January 26 issue of the Los Angeles Times, the columnist Patt Morrison wrote that she planned to celebrate…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Online-Giving Company to Cease Operations
By NICOLE WALLACECharitableway -- one of the best-known and best-financed of the recent e-philanthropy ventures -- has announced that it is shutting down operations. ALSO SEE:The E-Philanthropy Revolution Is Here to StayFROM THE ARCHIVES:Internet Entrepreneur Tries to Bring Employee Giving On Line…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
$13-Million Raised in On-the-Job Drives
By NICOLE WALLACECharitableway, a company in San Carlos, Calif., managed 12 electronic on-the-job giving campaigns this fall that brought in a total of more than $13-million for charity. The campaigns -- administered for companies such as Agilent Technologies, the Hewlett-Packard Company, Morgan…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor