By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 21, 2008; B03

When Erin Kelly and other members of Students Helping Honduras want to raise money, they don't hit the phones. Instead, they tap friends and relatives via Facebook, instant messaging or e-mail.

In 10 days late last month, the group raised almost $30,000 from more than 1,700 donors to provide economic and educational help to the poor in Honduras, said Kelly, 19, a junior at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.

"We've all grown up with technology as the best way to do everything," Kelly said of the group's members.

That tech savvy and energy were enough to win the group $50,000 in one of two national contests aimed at increasing charitable giving through the use of Web-based tools.

The 21 winners, announced yesterday, raised more than $1.7 million from almost 82,000 donors to benefit more than 3,000 charities, organizers said. The two contests, which ran simultaneously from Dec. 13 to Jan. 31, sought to highlight the potential of online philanthropy while "democratizing" charitable giving by encouraging donations as small as $10 from people of all incomes, organizers said.

"I think this could really help revolutionize charitable giving in this country," said Randy Siegel, publisher of Parade magazine, one of the contest sponsors.

Competitors were ranked by how many donors they generated. The sponsors donated $750,000 to the winners' charities as prize money. In addition to Parade, the sponsors were the Case Foundation and Facebook.

The Causes Giving Challenge, sponsored by Facebook and Case, yielded 33,238 donations totaling $628,072 for more than 2,500 charities, organizers said. The America's Giving Challenge, sponsored by Parade and Case, yielded 48,718 donations totaling more than $1.2 million for more than 600 charities, organizers said.

Students Helping Honduras was an America's Giving winner. Two other Washington area organizations, Atlas Service Corps and Friends of Burkina Faso, were America's Giving winners and received $50,000 awards from Parade and Case.

Causes Giving winners included Mirah Horowitz, 32, of Georgetown, who won $10,000 for Arlington-based Homeward Trails Animal Rescue, and Rick Gentry, 38, of the District, who won $10,000 for his employer, Greenpeace. Both used Facebook to raise money.

Horowitz said her group raised about $15,000 from almost 600 donors by urging volunteers, relatives and friends to sign up for -- and donate money through -- Facebook. "Even my 82-year-old grandmother signed herself up for Facebook and donated," said Horowitz, who volunteers as the animal rescue's dog foster care coordinator when she is not working as chief counsel to U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)

Horowitz said she solicited donations from Facebook friends, some dating back to elementary and high school, whom she had not thought of approaching before. In its first online fundraiser, the group raised more money than it ever had through art auctions, bake sales and spaghetti dinners, she said. More online fundraising will follow, she said. "It's definitely opened up a whole new world of possibilities for us," Horowitz said.