By Daniel Pearson

It used to be that children who wanted to make a contribution to charity had limited choices. They could either take around a UNICEF box at Halloween, or they could organize a small event, like a neighborhood car wash, and mail in the money they collected.

A handful of Web sites are striving to change this, and the method by which people from around the world give to charity, by asking Internet users to allow a group of sponsors to hold their attention for a few seconds.

The year-old Hunger Site, winner of a people's choice Webby this year for best activism site, lets Internet users donate a cup-and-a-half of staple food to a hungry person by clicking on the "Donate Free Food" button.

It's all paid for by a revolving list of advertisers, at no cost to the site visitor. The only drawback is each visitor can only make one donation per day. This simple idea has managed to raise worldwide hunger as an online issue. More than 12,435,000 pounds of food have been donated since January of this year alone, with more than 9.4 million people visiting the site each month.

Although there is not yet a way to calculate exactly what kind of impact The Hunger Site is making around the world, there is at least a little bit of good news about worldwide efforts from the United Nations World Food Programme -- the number of people starving to death every day is down from 35,000 one decade ago to 24,000 people now.

Another group, The Rainforest Site, has the same type of online effort. By clicking on the "Donate Land - Free" button, each Web surfer can preserve up to 24.9 square feet of land, depending on the number of sponsors. In lieu of advertising, each sponsor agrees to help pay for the equivalent of 2.7 square feet of land per site visitor.

The site is in the middle of its second "Race for the Rain Forest" campaign, which will end August 1. The first race pulled in 350,000 participants and saved 2,000 acres of forest from January 14 to April 22 of this year.

The top 100 people who visited the site and clicked on the link the most often had another 1,000 acres of rain forest preserved in their names. The top two participants saved almost 20 acres between them.

There are other sites out there, such as 4charity.com and GreaterGood.com that have partnered with commercial organizations for similar efforts. What those partnerships are doing -- in addition to drawing in revenues for qualified nonprofits -- is creating a lot of awareness. The news media is picking up on their efforts, participants are spreading the word, and people can log off their computers feeling they have made a positive impact on the world.

While this may or may not be the future of philanthropic giving, it certainly appears to be a great tool for educating the next generation about the importance of giving something back to the community and the world. Especially as the concept of a "neighbor" changes from someone living on the other side of a backyard fence to someone living on the other side of the world, thanks to the information superhighway.

Maybe some Halloween in the not-so-distant future, kids will carry around pocket-sized computers with Internet connections and ask that people who give out candy also click on a link to a digital UNICEF box.

Daniel Pearson can be reached at
danielpearson@mindspring.com