Innovative Fund-Raising Efforts Are Low in Cost and High on Appeal

In recent years many charities have sought to increase their revenue by cutting their fund-raising expenses.

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The efforts on these pages illustrate how some charities are benefiting from innovative, cost-effective ways to bring in gifts.

A Washington AIDS clinic is saving money and recruiting new donors by putting an unusual appeal in commercial coupon mailings that are sent to thousands of metropolitan-area residents, while a Memphis hospital started raising money from its own employees and saved money by tying its campaign to a well-established local United Way drive.

Other non-profit groups have received gifts, at little or no expense to their organizations, from new efforts to add a charity angle to commercial ventures.

A stock-trading company that allows people to buy and sell stocks on line, for example, hopes to lure customers with a game in which celebrity contestants are rewarded with payments to their favorite charities.

And in Canada, a real-estate broker is generating gifts to charities out of the commissions that real-estate agents earn for helping people buy or sell their homes. If the idea catches on, he says, it could bring billions of new dollars to charities in Canada and the United States — at no cost to those organizations.