February 6, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Home for Little Wanderers, a Boston social-service group that works with children and families, in October raised $25,000 at a casino night organized by a group of young professionals including the 27-year-old son of the charity’s chief executive.
Held in a high-end hotel, the event featured a disc jockey and a roulette wheel and charged donors $100 apiece to attend.
World of Children, which gives annual prizes and raises money for people around the world who aid needy kids, last year created a board of 10 “young leaders” mostly in their 20s and 30s who have organized chapters and started holding fund-raising events in six cities nationwide.
Among their gatherings: cocktail parties; a play performance at a theater that gave all the money from ticket sales to the charity; and a birthday party given by a young executive at a Chicago advertising agency who asked his guests to donate to World of Children instead of buying him a birthday present.
The new board “has had an enormous effect in building a community of young philanthropists interested in our work,” says Lynn Wallace Naylor, World of Children’s executive director. “They are working with us online, they are tweeting and Facebooking.”
As a result, she says, traffic to the charity’s Web site last year grew by 200 percent over 2009, while online gifts tripled to more than $51,000.
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