December 17, 1998 | Read Time: 1 minute
Some 150 charities are now offering donors the chance to give on line though donations that are charged to their telephone bills. The new service is designed to appeal to donors who are leery about giving out their credit-card account numbers over the Internet.
Here’s how it works: After a donor makes a pledge on a charity’s Web site, encrypted information about the pledge is downloaded to the donor’s computer, the donor’s modem severs the Internet connection and automatically dials into a secure computer at eCharge, a Seattle company that enables on-line consumers to charge goods and services to their phone bills. The donation is added by eCharge to the donor’s phone bill, and the telephone company passes the gift along to the charity.
The service is being offered jointly by eCharge and GiveToCharity.com, a Tampa company that helps charities process on-line credit-card donations.
Currently, the new service is available to the members of GiveToCharity.com. Those charities have electronic links on their Web sites to GiveToCharity’s computer server, which encrypts donors’ credit-card numbers as they are transmitted via the Internet. The company — which keeps 15 per cent of each charge to cover start-up, administration, and processing costs — has added eCharge’s telephone-billing service at no cost to members.
For more information: Contact Michael Storm, Chief Executive Officer, GiveToCharity.com, P.O. Box 25332, Tampa, Fla. 33622-5332; (813) 886-3010; fax (813) 290-0690; http://www.givetocharity.com. Or contact eCharge Corporation, 500 Union Street, Suite 745, Seattle 98101; (206) 749-9900; http://www.echarge.com.
