Aids

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ANN DONAHUE

Staff Reporter

Shopping and charitable giving? It’s an odd mix, but one that the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Santa Monica is hoping to latch onto.

In partnership with Seattle-based GreaterGood.com, the foundation has created an Internet “shopping village” on its Web site, www.pedaids.org. The “village” actually consists of links to various e-commerce sites. A portion of all sales generated by customers linking into the vendors via the foundation’s home page will go back to the charity.

Participating retailers include e-commerce heavyweights eToys and Amazon.com, as well as jcrew.com, the online operation of apparel retailer J Crew.

But it’s been slow going so far, especially in comparison to the glitzy celebrity carnivals that rake in millions annually for the foundation. Since its debut in February, the shopping village has only pulled in a little more than $100 for the charity, said Chuck Hoblitzelle, the foundation’s manager of information systems.

“We don’t have very high expectations in the early going, but we’re perfectly willing to see what we can do,” he said. “There’s no overhead. GreaterGood.com pays for the upkeep of the site, so there’s no real downside.”

But no upside either a stark contrast to the explosive success other ventures have found on the Web.

“The whole perspective of e-commerce doesn’t fit in some ways with current thinking about philanthropic giving,” said Michael Johnston, with Toronto-based Hewitt & Johnston, a philanthropic consulting firm. “Among all the Western countries, the United States is still the most check-driven when it comes to fund-raising. It’s going to take Americans a little more time to get used to giving their credit card numbers out online.”

Johnston, author of the book “A Fundraiser’s Guide to the Internet,” compared the current hesitance with 30 years ago when giving out personal information over the telephone was unfathomable.

“The people who are giving online now are the early adopters of the medium the people who bought their first book from Amazon.com three years ago,” he said. “It’s not surprising that they have only raised $100 so far. It’s going to be two or three years before online giving takes off.”

The shopping village is being operated in conjunction with another cyber-fund-raising program the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation launched earlier this year through which credit card donations can be made online.

The foundation’s home page receives between 6,000 and 8,000 hits each month. So far, more than $2,000 has been raised through the direct-donation program, Hoblitzelle said.

More than half of that money came in a rush of donations following the birth of the first child of “The X-Files” star David Duchovny and his actress wife, Tea Leoni, on April 24.

When the arrival of the baby girl was made public, an “X-Files” fan placed a link on his home page asking people to donate to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in the name of Madelaine West Duchovny. Within days, dozens of people started to donate online.

“It was the fan taking the initiative, like ‘Hey, David thinks this is cool, so let’s go with that charity,’ ” Hoblitzelle said. “It sort of characterizes the serendipitous nature of the Web.”

But is serendipity enough for a charity to get by? No way, says Johnston, who said the face-to-face element of fund raising will always be crucial.

“When we meet face to face, we release hormones that create trust and understanding,” he said. “It may sound weird, but those things tend to deteriorate when we’re not face to face.

Still, Hoblitzelle said, “the great thing about the Internet is that it’s there 24 hours a day. If someone decides at 3 a.m. that they want to give money to charity which has happened it’s great because we’re only here from 9 to 5 to take donations over the phone.”

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