Among your emails and junk mail this year, it's a fair bet there will be several messages from big charities about their new way of putting fun into fundraising - an online raffle, offering exotic prizes such as an exclusive trip to the Russian space centre in Moscow, or a team-signed Manchester United shirt.
If, logged on to home or office computer, you are tempted to buy online "chances", at £1 each, you will be assisting a good cause - and helping to justify one man's prediction that soon we will be spending up to £12m a year in this way.
Peter Sweatman is the guy with the golden hunch. He is a tall, tanned former merchant banker who, stressed out after a decade with JP Morgan in London and New York, took time out to seek a more fulfilling career. He came up with the idea of founding the Charity Technology Trust (CTT), which, he says, radically cuts the costs to charities of organising raffles.
He had read a book by Howard Lake about the potential of online fundraising. And though it appeared in 1994, Sweatman realised through chatting with contacts, that voluntary bodies were scarcely using emails to contact donors.
That, plus the realisation that charities are permitted by the gaming board to run their own raffles up to a ceiling of £5m a year, set him thinking. Why not streamline the traditional raffle - a £100m a year source of funds - by putting it on the web?
Costs saved are huge, says Sweatman, sitting in CTT's office in Waterloo, south London. "With paper-based raffles, only 47% of revenues reach the charity; the rest is spent on prizes and process costs."
The contract offered by CTT - itself a charity - takes just 20% of the total in costs, leaving 80% for good causes. The deal was attractive enough to sign up a first group of charities - including Oxfam, Barnardo's, the National Trust and Guide Dogs for the Blind - though results of the first online raffles were very modest.
Total proceeds ranged from £2,000 a game to £11,000. None of the participating charities contacted by Society said it was disappointed; they were keen to try more, not only for financial returns but to attract more, younger supporters.
Sweatman says the returns for the raffles in the first few months are on target. But how will CTT reach that £12m figure he speaks of? "2001 - nothing to speak of. 2002 - I think it will be £372,000. That's very precise because it's in my business plan. 2003 - £1.5m; 2004 - £2.8m; 2005 - call it £4m or £5m; 2006 - £7m." By then, he reckons that an additional £5m will be coming from other online raffles. "I can't suppose there won't be others," he says. "The national lottery might put out a charity raffle."
Sweatman, 32, is so determined to make his idea work that he is taking no salary until CTT breaks even; after that, it will be capped at £50,000 - rather less, one imagines (for he is coy on this point), than he was earning at JP Morgan.
His special brand of evangelism has been directed at the new technology sector, which has donated equipment and expertise and has provided sites for advertising raffles. Right now, he is happily counting new converts. In recent weeks, Mencap, the Royal British Legion, the NSPCC and the Landmark Trust have asked CTT to run online raffles for them.
In Sweatman's new role, there are strong traces of the corporate culture of international banking, which he entered as a Cambridge graduate. But an earlier formative influence has been asserting itself. "My mother was an active fundraiser for Barnardo's," he says. "She felt it was important to play a strong part in the community. And she was a very strong role model for me."
So he was a "box-shaker" as a teenager, and when his mother died - by then his banking career was launched - Barnardo's contacted him and asked if he would be interested in continuing her valued work. "I was chair of their young professionals group - organising balls and theatre visits," he says. "We were raising between £70,000 and £100,000 for them."
Years later, when he was casting round for the career change that led to CTT, that interest coincided with his father's business interests. He co-founded a publishing company of technical magazines. "He started the business selling advertising space from a basement, with my mother typing and making phone calls," says Sweatman. "I have deep admiration for that achievement."
But while his father was an entrepreneur, the big leap Sweatman aspires to make is to be a social entrepreneur. He is confident that social business is a fecund field - for job satisfaction, rather than great riches."Given the area I'm in," he says, "I imagine I will find it easier to have a brilliant idea that will save charities money rather than a brilliant idea that will make me money."
The Charity Technology Trust is on 020-7401 5400 or www.ctt.org
