Trading

Major events can prove a lucrative source of income to local charities.

Selling used postage stamps has been a popular, if not exactly lucrative, fundraising activity for many charities. The appeal for more stamps has now reached the Web in the form of Stamp For Causes.

Sheri Orloff has set up a Web site called "Second Chance Software" to help direct software to appropriate nonprofit organisations.

If you have software you would like to donate to someone who will genuinely appreciate it, simply visit the site and fill out the short form. Ms Orloff developed the site after helping a nonprofit search for suitable freeware software.

Someone was going to come up with an online charity tie-in called Safety Net sooner or later, so the name of Vauxhall's road safety site in collaboration with the British Red Cross will come as no surprise.

Web-Fishing, a "first-ever charity online game", offers Internet surfers the opportunity to make a $5 to $750 credit card donation and enter themselves in a competition.

"She was probably the most successful fund-raiser on the planet", wrote Michael Streeter in The Independent (1 September 1997).

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, questions an odd fundraising merchandise product.

Some ideas for fundraising merchandise are just plain odd.

Two US non-profits received professionally-designed Web sites in eight hours as part of a Web design competition.

Two teams of designers created the sites as part of the Web97 conference in San Francisco. The benefiting charities were Artists for a Hate-Free America and Spare Change.

Last month Internet magazine set up a design challenge to let three Web design agencies create an effective site design for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

US company ReplyNet is offering free e-mail marketing services to charities (and that includes UK charities).

ReplyNet will provide you with e-mail marketing services such as an auto-responder, mailing list, listserv, reader service, or fulfillment account on for free. As they say, "For your kind work, we offer our service free of charge."