Where It's @

“Technology plays a critical role in that, and fundraisers need to recognize that and possibly not go just one on one,” she adds. “That’s where I see potential for some really innovative thinking.”

Giving circles where the “ladies who lunch” meet to eat and decide where to donate their pooled resources are one thing. But just how effective are virtual communities? Do they too fill the basic human need that Verclas talks about? Apparently so. She quotes research that, she says, “has put a definitive end to the notion that somehow online communities are poor or that somehow technology is depriving us.”