December 11, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
As shoppers scurry to finish their holiday shopping, a new nonprofit organization hopes to spur charitable giving in lieu of candy, jewelry, and other traditional presents.
Visitors to the WhatGoesAround.org Web site can make online donations to any of more than 900,000 nonprofit organizations. They can also register a “givelist” of charities they support, which friends and family members can consult and then make contributions to those organizations through the site in honor of their loved one.
The group’s founder, Sylvia Stein, a former marketing executive, envisions donors making contributions through the site to celebrate holidays, birthdays, and marriages, and to make memorial gifts. But she is also excited about the site’s potential to help people reach out to one another in everyday situations.
Ms. Stein says that one donor told her, “I’ve been looking for a way to say thank you to my pediatrician. I call him at midnight. He’s always there, and I want to thank him. This is a way I can thank him, and it feels right.”
People who register with the site can put extra money into a “change jar,” which they can use to make future gifts without having to re-enter their credit card numbers. WhatGoesAround is encouraging parents to use the feature as a way to help their children make charitable gifts and learn about philanthropy.
Donors have access through the site to their giving records, which show both the gifts they made personally and any contributions made by others in their honor.
The site went online November 12, and in its first three weeks, 265 people registered and made gifts of more than $6,100.
WhatGoesAround is organized as a donor-advised fund, which allows the organization to aggregate donations and mail out checks to charities each month. The organization deducts about 3 percent from gifts made through the site to cover transaction expenses, but does not use that money for its own overhead.
So far, WhatGoesAround has received a $50,000 grant from the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, in New York, and it is encouraging people who use the site to donate $5 each toward its operational expenses.
Ms. Stein says she hopes WhatGoesAround will change the way donors feel about giving.
“So much of giving is dire and desperate,” says Ms. Stein. “Emotionally it’s a very positive experience to come to the site, to connect to people this way, and then to make a gift.”
To get there: Go to http://www.whatgoesaround.org.
