That's how I feel, anyway. I just clicked on www.power2give.org and bought a need-based scholarship for one kid in seventh through 12th grade to attend Jazz Arts Initiative enrichment classes.

Two scholarships, actually, because the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation currently matches every dollar given to every such project. And this website is aptly named, because you really do get a feeling of power when you go there.

If I played the saxophone, the noise would sound like a farmer strangling a goose. But I can be a kingmaker. If I endow one modest scholarship, a youngster who gets a horn in his hands for the first time could someday join John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk in the roster of Tar Heel jazz greats.

The Arts & Science Council opened the site this year to inspire us all to contribute money. The move was a helpful one for both donors (one-stop giving!) and recipients, who get to pitch pet projects that general operating expenses might not have covered.

Why this idea works

This is also a shrewd marketing move. Human beings like to help individuals, not masses. People who might not give a nickel to spay stray animals will spend time trying to find the owner of a lost puppy. Viewers who bypass stories about malnutrition in Africa may be stopped by (and respond to) the image of one starving child in Darfur.

So it is with the arts. It's easy enough to grunt, "Oh, I don't listen to classical music" if the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra asks for annual support. But when the CSO needs help with its Sounds Like Angels program at Winterfield Elementary School, and the photo shows avuncular maestro Christopher Warren-Green patting a young violinist on the head ... .

Power2Give changes people's feelings about the ASC, too. When you give money to its annual fund drive, which I do, you can't direct it: You're trusting strangers to make funding decisions, and some folks stay out of that process. (Of course, nothing has ever stopped them from giving directly to arts groups.)

Connect with individuals

Now the ASC links individuals directly to endeavors - 54, as of last week - that ask you to put a new camera in Carolina Raptor Center's eagle enclosure or underwrite costumes for a new ballet by Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works.

You can filter by category, organization, money needed and so forth. (One note: 88 percent of a gift goes to the project, while 12 percent covers "maintenance, upkeep and transactional processing costs." The posted amount includes both.)

There's another reason for the site's name. As Spider-Man says, with great power comes great responsibility. Nobody would hand dough to a site called Obligation2Give.org, but the region's cultural health depends on you and me.

We may think it doesn't, because corporations and millionaires have consistently backed the arts - especially mainstream arts or arts that help kids - for the 31 years I've lived here.

For example, Wells Fargo is giving $250,000 to be Opera Carolina's chief sponsor over two seasons, donated $100,000 to underwrite N.C. Dance Theatre's "Nutcracker" last Christmas and supplied $175,000 to support the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art's "Niki de Saint Phalle: Creation of a New Mythology" exhibit.

Wells Fargo management feels it owes a lot of love to the city where it has a huge presence. But you and I owe this city something, too - and I don't mean taxes - if we want culture to thrive.

If you can't afford a painting, you can buy an underprivileged kid a handful of paintbrushes. If you can't commission a ballet, you can help notoriously underpaid dancers buy toe shoes. The little buzz of pleasure you'll get will put you briefly on top of the world.