You know the charities that let you “adopt a child,” but not in the Brangelina way? For just a few dollars a month, you can feed a kid and get her school books, etc., and every month you get a photo and a letter? Based on nothing but cynicism, I never trusted those ads, but you can’t deny their effectiveness.

In the p2p world of the Web (where p2p = people-to-people and not necessarily peer-to-peer), we can be in direct contact with people we are in a position to help, without the sense that there is a major organization filtering — and possibly professionally ghostwriting — the communications. Here are two organizations that take different approaches…

Kiva.org lets you make a loan to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world. It is a loan, not a gift. The recipients are charged interest by the local microfinance institution through which the loans are vetted and managed. Kiva’s FAQ says that so far its payback rate is 100% and that the general payback rate worldwide for micro-loans is 97%.

Unfortunately, Kiva is not yet posting what interest rates their microfinance partners are charging. You’d think that Kiva, which claims to vette their partners thoroughly, would have this basic information.

DonorsChoose also lets you decide which project you want to fund, confining itself to US projects requested by teachers — it was started by teachers who were digging into their own pockets to provide what their kids need. The group doesn’t hand out cash to teachers. Instead, it pays the vendors directly for what the project requires. This removes any questions about whether the money is making it into the projects, but it does require DonorsChoose to maintain a staff to manage the fulfillment process. Donors can opt to include the 15-25% fullfilment costs in their donation.

DonorsChoose has started a “Blogger Challenge.” You pick a project to support and then post a form on your site, inviting your readers to contribute. For example, here’s the Joho Challenge:

This particular challenge is raising money for read-along tapes for a 4th grade class where about half the kids are learning English. (More here.)

I really like the idea of P2P philanthropy. It gets us past the abstractions. But, I also have concerns. Our sympathies aren’t always the best guide: We may do more good by building a prosaic community water filtering system than by giving a loan to the family with doe-eyed child…or by buying read-along tapes for an American 4th grade class. We have trouble responding sympathetically at the level of systems. So, my family will continue to give every month to Oxfam. Also.

Fortunately, there are many ways to give. Unfortunately, there are so many needs. [Tags: charity philanthropy ]

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