December 7, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
Holiday shoppers in search of a way to do more than just add clutter to the homes of family and friends may find a new site known as Shopnola.org a helpful source of ideas. The site, started in October, promotes New Orleans businesses and charities as a way to help the city recover from Hurricane Katrina. Visitors to the site can find information on nearly 60 New Orleans area stores from which to order online gifts and 20 nonprofit organizations that can receive online donations.
Eileen Johnson, a senior account executive at Beuerman Miller Fitzgerald, a New Orleans marketing firm that helped create the site, said the idea behind it is to give people an easy way to help rebuild the city, which is still struggling more than a year after the hurricane. “You have a wonderfully unique gift that’s special, unique to the city,” Ms. Johnson said. “Not only do you give a wonderful Christmas gift, you do have a gift that keeps giving yearround.”
To be listed on the site, shops have to be able to handle online orders in a timely way, and charities have to be able to receive donations online, Ms. Johnson said. Shell Corporation is supporting the Web site, but Ms. Johnson could not say how much the company contributed to the effort.
For more information: Go to http://shopnola.org.
