Trading

Heifer Project International are once again offering their compelling charity catalogue to online donors. Mugs, t-shirts and wrapping paper are so passé, dahling: this year why not buy a cow, a goat ("kids love kids!"), chickens or bees?

The charity Christmas card business is now valued at £120m a year. It started in 1947, according to UNICEF, when a seven-year-old Czech girl's thank-you card to UNICEF was reproduced as a greetings card and sold to supporters.

Oxfam GB has launched its Fair Trade catalogue online in time for Christmas.

Cards for Good Causes launched their charity Christmas cards site earlier this month, as UK Fundraising reported.

Charity Christmas card consortium Cards for Good Causes launches its Web site later today. Cards from the 25 member charities plus other guest charities are available for secure online purchase, and are divided into three categories, humorous, traditional, and religious.

Last week's letter in The Guardian Online concerning charitycards.co.uk's use of Flash technology on its Web site has spawned a reply on the supplement's letters page. Gordon Stevenson retorted that "the original web designer of charitycards was correct to use Flash, since 69.78% of all web browsers now have Flash player installed."

Last month UK Fundraising welcomed the latest charity Christmas card-selling Web site last month. Unfortunately Charitycards.co.uk used a great deal of Flash technology which, while impressive, was not fast or user-friendly, both key qualities of a successful e-commerce site.

Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has relaunched its new-look CharityCard Web site.

CharityCard allows you to make tax-effective donations to your favourite causes, whenever you choose. Over the past 12 months, the 75,000 CharityCard holders have given over £63 million to their favourite causes, £200,000 of which was given online.

The Evening Standard today publishes an investigation into a chain of London charity shops which it claims are "covertly raising funds" for "an extremist right-wing group with links to neo-fascists on the Continent."

Yehi.com is a new Solihull-based site that offers to donate up to 50% of sales of UK giftware merchandise to participating charities. Read UK Fundraising's report.