This week’s feature series on Read/WriteWeb is non-profits and the Web. We’ll be exploring how non-profit organizations use the Web and the tools available for them.
By non-profits, we mean charities, clubs and any “organization whose primary objective is something other than the generation of profit” (Wikipedia’s definition). Non-profit organizations cover a wide range of areas – from the environment to politics and much more. The Web is often utilized by such organizations, because of the need to reach out to people – e.g. calls to action, fund-raising or just general awareness.
A Wired article back in 2004, entitled For Nonprofits, Web Is a Windfall, stated that there is big money to be made over the Web for non-profit organizations:
“With the Internet playing such an important role in everyone’s life, online giving will become more the norm,” said Kintera CEO and chairman Harry Gruber in a statement.
“Over $241 billion in total donations were given in 2002,” said Gruber. “We estimate that more than $1 billion of those donations were made online, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.”
And that was 3.5 years ago. In 2007, with the enormous popularity of social networks, non-profits have even more ways to reach their target audience. Change.org, a social network for social activism that we profiled at the beginning of this year, is one example of the current generation of Web enabled non-profits.
Please let us know your favorite Web-powered non-profits. Also, what Web tools and resources are you aware of that non-profits can use?
