This Is for Charity?

"It's pretty hard for someone to say $10 is too much," Shortill says. A donation that size "is incidental to a lot of people, but when you add up all the incidentals, it becomes a sizable check."

Online charitable giving has helped underscore the potential of accumulating small donations.

"In the online world, it's definitely easier for someone to conceive of doing a quick transaction for $10," says Jenn Thompson, managing director at the Washington branch of Changing Our World. "Similar to shopping on Amazon, it's too easy not to do."

For independent fundraisers like Campos and White, the women who turned the appeal of dating into money for the Avon walk, the Internet has simplified the solicitation of donations. How do you know whether your friends have money to give -- and how comfortable are you asking them?

"It's nice to be able to hide behind the veil of an e-mail or a Web page that you forward to someone," says Bill Strathmann, chief executive of Network for Good, an online hub for charitable giving. "You don't have to go through that socially awkward moment" of asking face to face.

Like similar sites, Network for Good has introduced the concept of charity widgets, or "badges" that link to charitable giving sites and track donations. Strathmann, for instance, has a badge in the signature of his outgoing e-mails, and if recipients click on it and donate, the amount goes toward the total he has raised.

Ultimately, whatever the method -- charity badges or cash donations at the door -- it's possible for anyone to be a social entrepreneur, to build charitable capital through a social network.

This, after all, is the one thing most of us have.

"I'm not a researcher; I can't find a cure. And I'm not Bill Gates; I can't give millions of dollars," says White, whose Babes for Boobs auction generated nearly $5,000 last year. "This is what we're left to do when we can't do anything else: Raise money to contribute, tell people and walk."

And if we should garner a few laughs -- and grow a few lip hairs -- in the process? All the better.

"Everything associated with our events ends up being good," Shortill says, "except for the hangovers the next day."