Column: Couples Create Charity Registries

Jen Crane, left, and Tom Frohlich, right, send out some invitations for their July wedding in Seattle, WA. Thursday, June 8, 2006. Crane and Frohlich have listed charitable organizations on their wedding registry, allowing their guests to make donations instead of a gift for them. (AP Photo/Ron Wurzer) (Ron Wurzer - AP)

Georgia and James Markarian of Los Altos, Calif., felt particularly uneasy last year while planning the details of their wedding so soon after the massive South Asian tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people across 12 nations.

"We were looking at people who had no homes _ and spending $500 on sorbet," the 33-year-old Georgia Markarian said, recounting her decision to find some way to use the couple's Napa Valley wedding as an occasion to help others.

The Markarians set up an online charitable wedding registry through JustGive.org, a nonprofit that has collected some $850,000 and directed it to various charities on behalf of newlyweds since 2003.

The Markarian wedding alone netted $5,000 for The Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, Save the Children and United Way _ all of which were involved in the international relief effort following the tsunami that inspired the Markarians to contact JustGive.org.

"It felt like people gave more than they would have had it been a regular wedding gift," Markarian said, conceding that she too would feel compelled to dig a little deeper if she knew her gift would benefit such a worthy cause.

JustGive.org executive director Kendall Webb said wedding-related giving accounted for roughly 2 percent of the $17 million raised in total by the charity-oriented Web site in 2005, though she emphasized that the market has huge growth potential. In 2003, just 120 couples used JustGive's service, compared with 540 in 2005.

By comparison, the I Do Foundation, which focuses solely on wedding-related charity, has raised $1.5 million since it was founded in 2002, with more than two-thirds of that coming in the past year.

Carrie Nixon and Dmitri Mehlhorn of Vienna, Va., used their 2003 wedding to raise more than $4,000 for charities devoted to finding cures for cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, diseases that afflicted various members of their family. But the couple didn't stop there.

Last Christmas, the couple and more than 20 relatives exchanged charitable donations instead of giving more conventional stocking stuffers. "It's an interesting way to introduce children to charitable giving," said Nixon, adding that the kids in the family also got some toys.

This is just the kind of impact that nonprofits supporting charitable wedding registries hope to see. Some officials at these nonprofits said their long-term objective is to help create a cultural tradition in America whereby personal and religious celebrations of all kinds are seen as philanthropic opportunities.

"We're trying to change behavior away from mindless consumerism," said Donna Zaccaro, president of Whatgoesaround.org. "That's the real goal."

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http://www.whatgoesaround.org

http://www.idofoundation.org

http://www.justgive.org