The Internet Meets Philanthropy

Organizations like United Way can give philanthropy a bad name. This story in The New York Times outlines the deceptive manner in which United Way accounts for the money it receives, and as the Times notes, “Its accounting practices raise questions for potential donors who want to know precisely how much of their contributions go to people in need rather than the organization helping them.” It doesn’t have to be that way. A friend recently emailed me about a web-based organization, Donors Choose, which focuses on underfunded public schools in New York City and allows donors to browse a list, posted on its website, of modestly-priced proposals from teachers who need resources of one sort or another–an overhead projector for a school in the Bronx, a set of encyclopedias for a class in Manhattan, funding for a field trip to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, etc. Finding worthy projects, and funding them, is as easy as shopping at Amazon.com.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.