August 9, 2001 | Read Time: 3 minutes
A growing number of Web sites have sprung up to urge Americans to donate
FROM THE ARCHIVES:
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their share of the $38-billion in tax rebates the Internal Revenue Service is sending taxpayers over the next few months.
Under a tax measure passed by Congress, single taxpayers can receive up to $300, and married couples can get up to $600.
About 4 percent of Americans currently plan to donate their tax rebate to charity, according to a poll of 911 people published last month by The Christian Science Monitor.
One company that wants to see that percentage grow is Working Assets, a San Francisco telecommunications company that annually donates part of its revenue to nonprofit groups selected by its customers. As an incentive, Working Assets has agreed to match tax-rebate contributions made to nonprofit organizations between July 4 and November 1 via its GiveForChange.org site (http://www.giveforchange.org.) When online donations of exactly $300 or $600 are made to any of the 400 nonprofit groups listed on the GiveForChange site, Working Assets will match the gifts, up to a total contribution of $1-million.
GiveForChange encourages contributors to send an e-mail message to President Bush notifying him of their donations. The site includes a sample letter that reads: “Even though you think animals are for eating and nature preserves are for drilling, I know that, in your heart of hearts, you truly care about the environment. Which is why I’m making a donation to the Sierra Club on your behalf.”
Another site, RejectTheRebate.com, also urges people to tell Mr. Bush what they did with their rebate. Visitors to the site are asked to donate their I.R.S. checks to charity and sign a petition that will be sent to the White House and Congress saying how much was donated. United for a Fair Economy (http://www.ufenet.org), a Boston advocacy group that seeks to reduce income inequality, set up the site.
Third Millennium, a New York nonprofit group that seeks to ensure that the views of young adults are included in national policy debates, created the first rebate-donation Web site. Even before President Bush signed the rebate plan into law, the charity had started working on its DonateRebate.org site, which receives about 1,000 visitors per week, says Richard Thau, president of Third Millennium. The site directs visitors to Helping.org (http://www.helping.org), a database of more than 700,000 nonprofit organizations.
Smaller charities have also started to use the Internet to make appeals for the rebate checks.
The Peace Mennonite Church of Dallas, for example, created Project Rebate Redirect (http://web2.airmail.net/pmc/rebateredirect). The Web site doesn’t solicit funds for the church, nor does it suggest specific organizations to give to, but it does urge people to send the money they receive from the I.R.S. to groups that serve the poor.
