Online giving to Boston University took a giant step forward in December 2003, with sixty-nine gifts totaling $39,430 charged to credit cards via the secure Alumni Web site. Individual gifts ranged from $20 to $15,000. In the previous months totals generally ranged between about $1,000 and $7,000, given by fewer than twenty donors.

	Coleen Resnick, director of annual giving. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

Charitable giving increases in December, as the end of the tax year approaches. In December 2002, BU received $9,416 in online gifts, about a 700 percent increase over previous months. The December 2003 increase over a similar period was about 2,000 percent.

"Much of the credit goes to the development of an informational, user-friendly, secure place for BU constituencies to make gifts," says Coleen Resnick, director of annual giving. "We expect online giving to increase with all the services BU continues to launch on the Alumni Web, including the alumni directory, e-mail forwarding for life, and the career advisory network."