Share
The first in a series examining suggestions for easing the crisis facing Charlotte charities.
Here's a simple idea to help Charlotte's struggling charities: Put them all on one Web site where people can find them quickly to donate or volunteer.
The concept has been mentioned often by citizens responding to Mission Possible, a media coalition focused on the rising needs and shrinking budgets of nonprofits.
"If you can make a donation online and do it quickly," said Rose Rummel-Eury of Concord, "it might spur you to make the donation."
The technology for a "nonprofit portal" certainly exists. But experts say charities have shown little interest in making it happen.
Here's why: If one Web site accepts donations for all local charities, that site's owner could control the donor lists. And experts say charities, which treat such lists like gold, rarely share such information.
"It sounds like a good idea, but nobody wants their donors to go anywhere else," said Chris Meade, executive director of the Charlotte office of NPower, a national nonprofit that helps charities harness technology. He called charities' reluctance to pool donor information "the big hairy monster" blocking online cooperation.
There's more. Nonprofit officials say they put time and thought into their individual Web sites, and fear their programs may get lost on a centralized charity site.
"You're talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of nonprofits," said Frank Crawford, head of Youth Homes Inc., a social work agency serving vulnerable children and families. "You'd be like one tiny little minnow in a big ocean."
Marcie Kelso, head of the Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film, added: "Centralized gateways are wonderful, but individual institutions have to be able to tell their stories."
Still, experts say, it's possible to create a centralized Web site that helps nonprofits - without replacing existing sites.
"There's a little bit of brand erosion that you have to be careful of," said Larry Freed, an e-commerce expert who runs a Michigan-based consulting firm. "But as a sort of marketing tool for them, it's a phenomenal idea."
One-stop Web sites exist
The Web offers dramatic potential for rallying aid to good causes. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, for instance, the Texas-based Aidmatrix Foundation created an online system that mobilized and managed more than 53 million pounds of aid in warehouses from Oklahoma to Alabama.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency still uses the system to organize volunteers and donations for disaster relief efforts nationwide.
Still, experts consulted by the Observer say they know of no site that offers a comprehensive listing of local charities, plus built-in opportunities to donate or volunteer.
To be sure, there are national Web sites that allow variations on the one-stop-shopping theme Mission Possible volunteers have suggested. They include sites run by groups such as All for Good, Network for Good and VolunteerMatch.
A smattering of Charlotte charities appear on some of them, But their participation is sporadic, sometimes connecting their needs to one site but not others.
Such under-usage doesn't surprise the experts. They say many charities are still catching up to the for-profit sector when it comes to harnessing the power of the Web and today's social networking craze.
Human services charities, for instance, get less than 5 percent of their gifts via the Web, said Melissa Brown, a research director with Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy.
The head of Shelter Health Services, a charity providing health care to Charlotte's homeless, said he's used VolunteerMatch with modest results, but isn't sure if his group is listed on any of the other national sites.
"I don't think we would get a lot of action through them," Michael Sowyak said. "Normally our volunteers will call us because they know what we do and they look at our Web site, and maybe they have some affinity for working with vulnerable populations."
The Indianapolis example
Nonprofit leaders say United Ways and other umbrella organizations such as the Arts & Science Council would make logical jumping-off places for a centralized Web site.
Some United Ways around the country already have embraced the concept - or something close to it. The United Way in Indianapolis, for instance, runs a site that allows donors to give online. Donors can even designate that their credit card or bank account be debited on a recurring basis. Volunteers can search for opportunities by typing in a desired date. Charities can input their volunteer needs.
By contrast, the Web site run by Charlotte's United Way doesn't offer a searchable database of volunteer opportunities, and doesn't let donors set recurring bank drafts - an option Brown calls critical for increasing collections.
The Arts & Science Council hosts Web links to the nonprofits it supports, but that includes only about 30 organizations. The Foundation for the Carolinas estimates nearly 4,000 nonprofits call the region home.
The ASC and the United Way haven't talked about creating a centralized Web presence, but both expressed openness to the possibility.
ASC President Scott Provancher said his group is "willing to be a collaborator on technical solutions that will help raise the visibility of nonprofits" locally.
"We're very interested in this concept," said United Way spokesperson Dani Stone, "and we'd want to be included in any discussions around a central portal."
Many say even if such a site can be created, that doesn't guarantee many charities will use it or that many people will look at it.
Hands On Charlotte's Web site offers a searchable database of volunteer opportunities, for instance, but only a fraction of the thousands of local charities regularly take advantage of its services. Director Bob Young said the group expects to upgrade its Web site by year's end, making it a sort of nonprofit Craigslist, where charities can more easily post their own needs.
Even the Indianapolis United Way's site, despite its thoroughness, hasn't revolutionized that city's nonprofit scene.
"I've lived here nearly 20 years and didn't know about it," said Brown, the Indiana University researcher. "And I'm a United Way donor and United Way volunteer."
The site collected just $78,000 of the $38.8 million raised last year by the agency, but United Way officials applaud its impact - especially concerning volunteers.
Last year it connected some 2,400 volunteers to hundreds of nonprofits - including arts groups and other non-United Way charities that are allowed to post their needs.
"We feel very good about it," said Ellen Annala, president of Indianapolis' United Way. "It's becoming an increasingly helpful tool."
'That would be very useful'
Freed, the e-commerce consultant, said a helpful and comprehensive local charity portal could be created that stops short of supplanting the existing sites of nonprofits. It could be more of a directory of local sites, he said, with each nonprofit getting a chance to describe itself briefly. Those interested in individual charities could click on links to those charities' Web pages, where they could learn more about volunteering or donating. The Giving Guide on charlotteobserver.com is an example.
If heavily marketed, he suggested, such a site could be a boon for local nonprofits.
"It'd be a great way to drive additional traffic to them," he said.
A member of the Mission Possible panel that suggested the common Web site suggested it could help rally the community behind charities as they struggle to cope with the fallout from the recession and banking crisis.
"There are a lot of people out in the community who aren't involved right now and would like to be involved," said Nehal Patel, an employee of a Charlotte construction wholesale company. "It would be really easy for them to find whatever they are interested in and fill a need."
Some local charities say they'd be all for it.
"That would be very useful," said Sowyak, the Shelter Health Services director. "Building the brand and getting people to know what we do is one of our main communications challenges. Just having someone go up to our Web site and being able to see what we do is a positive, even if they don't volunteer or donate."
