Month: March 2006

_Jason Côté is Executive Director of “CanadaHelps”:http://www.canadahelps.org/, a public charitable foundation that runs Canada’s only online giving website that provides access to all of Canada’s 80,000+ registered charities. As a social entrepreneur, he is personally committed to helping mission-based organizations use information technology to support their work._
*One Degree:* “Jason, do you feel that Canadian charities should be doing more to leverage the Internet, and if so, what should they be doing?”
*Jason Côté:* The Internet is a potential windfall for charities both for short-term fundraising objectives and more importantly, long-term relationship building. The bottom line is that if you’re a charity and not fundraising online, you’re not only missing a significant audience segment, but the most cost-effective medium for building donor relationships. Online fundraising can be done more cheaply than offline because donors can be acquired and retained with lower production costs and no postage or telemarketing costs. Here’s “an example of the impact of online versus offline to a charity in New York.”:http://www.changingourworld.com/site/PageServer?pagename=cl_cs_ephilanthropy_wfan_clients
Many Canadian charities, especially the smaller ones, are still struggling with the classic lack of time, money, and expertise. Larger charities with resources are doing a great job; have a look at “World Wildlife Fund Canada’s Save Our Climate website”:http://www.wwf.ca/HowYouCanHelp/SaveOurClimate/. The site mashes information about the campaign with the reasons why donors have given in a beautiful Flash-based interface. I made a donation; you can search for my name (see the search bar at the bottom of the page) to see what I wrote in the sky.