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Philanthropic trend receives help from online nonprofit groups that serve as
intermediaries
Jen Crane and Tom Frohlich are banking on the generosity of friends and
family to collect as much money as possible when they get married -- but not for
selfish reasons.
In fact, the couple is quite embarrassed at the thought of receiving a bounty
of traditional wedding gifts, be they large checks or fancy dishes. That is why
they are instead encouraging guests to make donations in their honor to three
charities: the Sierra Club, Girls on the Run and Youth in Focus.
Crane and Frohlich, who will exchange vows next month in front of 80 guests
on Orcas Island off the north coast of Washington, are part of a
tiny-but-growing group of couples turning their weddings into philanthropic
opportunities. It is a trend that is picking up momentum, industry officials
said, with help from a handful of Web-based nonprofit groups that serve as
virtual intermediaries between couples, charities and guests.
While these decisions are largely a reflection of couples' altruism and other
personal values -- Crane, for example, volunteers with the Sierra Club -- many
who are setting up charitable wedding registries acknowledge more practical
motivations. For instance, as the average age of U.S. newlyweds rises and more
couples live together before tying the knot, there is not as much need for
cookware and other traditional gifts as in previous generations.
"We're in our 30s, so it's not like we need a lot of stuff," said Crane,
whose charitable wedding registry is managed by the I Do Foundation, a
Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that sends e-mails to guests informing
them of the couple's unorthodox request.
Of course, there are some things, such as a new camping stove, that the
couple would be happy to receive. And they know that certain guests,
particularly older family members, will insist on buying a gift that can be
wrapped and tied with a bow. For these reasons, Crane and Frohlich also set up a
more traditional gift registry through the same foundation, though it requires
participating retailers, such as REI and Linens 'n Things, to give a small
percentage of their sales to the charities the couple selected.
"We were looking for ways to cut back on the excess," explained Crane, who
like many brides-to-be these days was astounded by how quickly the costs of a
wedding can escalate. "The whole wedding industry is a little bit out of
control."
Because weddings are increasingly secular, "commercialized" events --
Americans spend $26,000, on average -- "people are looking for a way to reflect
that they are deeper than all that," said Carley Roney, co-founder of the
wedding information portal the Knot Inc.
Some couples are making donations in honor of their guests instead of handing
out party favors, while others are donating leftover food to nearby homeless
shelters. "The wedding was originally a broader community celebration. You fed
your entire village," Roney said.
But with more than 2 million couples married in the United States last year
and perhaps just a few thousand setting up any variety of charitable gift
registries, Roney said the trend is hardly putting a dent in the profitability
of the wedding industry.
"A greater trend," she said, "is the desire for cash as a wedding gift."
Couples who have incorporated charitable giving into their events said it
helped to keep their priorities in check.
Georgia and James Markarian of Los Altos 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 group 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 after 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 nonprofit groups supporting charitable
wedding registries hope to see. Some officials at these nonprofit groups 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." |
