The Internet can provide us with a wide range of opportunities to help others quickly and easily and more and more people are donating and engaging online.

The tsunami online fundraising experience is a good example. After the disaster, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of online donations. An interesting article on SeattleBusinessJournal.com, Nonprofits' new target: Web donors give more than check writers, discusses this developing trend:

Following a surprisingly large jump in online donations to aid victims of December's Indonesian tsunami, Northwest relief agencies are aggressively beefing up their Web operations… By adding staff, increasing online budgets, buying more Internet advertising and through other means, the region's top charities are trying to tap into a funding stream where the average contribution tends to be greater than those received through mailed-in checks and phoned-in pledges.
.....
“Perhaps the anonymity might have been a motivator for certain people to give,” she said. “You need all the avenues.”

The article says a lot of things that make sense to me.