Could Crowdfunding Eclipse Church as the Future of Charity?

The internet has made a lot of things either obsolete or virtually obsolete in recent years, including bookstores, record stores, video stores and print journalism. In the early days of the web, however, very few would have predicted that online charity would have a sizable impact on the world at large.

Yet the internet is very much making its presence felt in that realm today. There will be no telethon for muscular dystrophy this Labor Day, for instance. That traditional broadcast—hosted, for decades, by comedian Jerry Lewis—was phased out in 2014.