Donating to Charities
If you are like most people, you have probably received at least a few calls from charities asking if you can donate money to help them provide goods or services to those in need. This is because charities are a category of nonprofit organizations, or organizations that do not declare any profit for tax and legal purposes, but instead use whatever funds they generate beyond the cost of daily operations to provide as many high quality goods and services to the public or a given community as they can.
A variety of donation services are available, and a variety of techniques are used by nonprofits in fund development efforts. Larger nonprofits and charities tend to have entire professional staff departments devoted to fundraising and financial planning. Employees are involved whose entire job is to solicit donations, which they may do by applying for grants from nonprofit funding agencies, holding special fundraising events and inviting people who may be likely to contribute to their causes, holding telephone pledge drives, or calling individuals and businesses who have donated in the past or who may be likely to.
Since charities generally are eager for donations at any time, they usually have places where individuals and businesses can donate on their own without any solicitation. While you can always go to a charity’s main office if you prefer to donate in person, modern technology has made donating easier than ever with Internet donation features that can be added to charities’ Web sites. This is a great way to get donations from people who simply will only do things like donate to charities if no extra effort is required, because simply typing an amount and a credit number into a secure Web site takes almost no work or time.
All donation services are designed with the same purpose of generating funds for charities or organizations, so any method you may choose to use will be acceptable.
How can you help?
If you would like to donate money to a charity, you can do so by finding the charity’s mailing address and mailing a donation, by attending a public event put on by the charity and donating or speaking to one of the charity’s representatives about donating, or using any donation services that the charity makes available on its Web site. Charities generally make donating very easy for individuals and businesses of all types, because the only way they can continue to operate is through a large amount of donations from generous people. Any charity’s contact information should be able to found on the Internet, in the yellow pages, or by searching your area’s business and charitable organization listings.
Services for Your Charity
If you are currently involved with a charity that is looking for ways to expand its fund development operations and increase its donations, researching and using new donation services can help you. A number of companies exist that help smaller charities with such events as telephone pledge drives, public fundraising events, and Internet donation features for Web sites. These companies and services are probably easiest to locate and learn about on the Internet.
By Kristin Cleveland