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 Missing the e-boat: Jewish charities seemingly slow to adapt to Web
By Jacob Berkman at JTA.org
Eliezrie, the son of a Loss-area Chabad  Rabbi, was lying in a hospital bed at the Children's Hospital of Orange County, Calif., recovering from an infection caused by leukemia. Still, by Monday Eliezrie, 21, had launched a Web site describing the situation in the Gaza border town that has been targeted by Palestinian rocket fire and providing users with the opportunity to make online donations.
He predicted that by the end of this week the site, helpsderot.com, would attract 500,000 to 1 million users through e-mail promotions, as well as plugs on chabad.org and 850 other individual Chabad-related sites. It's the same strategy that the Chasidic movement employed last year when it collected about $750,000 for Hurricane Katrina relief. While Chabad has tapped into perhaps the fastest growing sector in the philanthropic world, many sectors of the Jewish world have been slow to catch on to the Internet era.
"Some Jewish organizations have been more successful than others," said Gary Tobin, the president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, which studies Jewish philanthropy. "But you don't see many who are very successful other than the Jewish National Fund."
The point was hammered home by a report in the June 14 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy based on a survey of the online fundraising efforts of the country's 400 largest charities. Among the 187 charities that responded and said they accepted online donations, the publication found that online gifts grew by about 37 percent in 2006. Of those, 85 charities saw an increase above 50 percent.
But only four Jewish charities appeared on the list, and one, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, saw a 78 percent decrease. The community's largest philanthropic network, the United Jewish Communities, raises about $3 billion annually through various revenue streams. But UJC, which is made up of local federations, collected just $9.2 million via the Internet in 2006, according to Barry Swartz, its senior vice president for federation services. Most of that money came from post-Hurricane Katrina efforts, Swartz said, calling the disaster relief drive a "launching point for using e-philanthropy in a serious way."
Some Jewish charities are faring well online.
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