Today's donors are besieged by requests for support from so many worthwhile causes that they become weary and jaded. Non-profits and charitable organizations are finding it difficult to increase funding for their programs without straining their relationships with their benefactors. At the same time, many groups are finding that web-sites and mailing lists are increasingly effective important tools for growth and enrichment of their supporting networks.

In this environment, a fund-raising tool such as LinkBaton that simultaneously helps to deliver a useful electronic information can be invaluable.

It would be a very unusual group that didn't have a significant number of books highly relevant to the groups' reason for being. An art museum will have art books; a church will have religious tracts; a school PTA will have summer reading lists. Libraries will have...books!( we have another page for libraries!) Providing links to these resources on a web site should be an important service to the group's community. And best of all, thanks to affiliate programs at most of the major on-line retailers, an organization can earn 5-15% commission on sales which result from book links!

Who to link to? With LinkBaton you can leave the choice up to the user. Ordinary hyperlinks take people from one web page to another. LinkBatons let users bounce from one web site to another. LinkBatons remember which destinations users prefer, assisting navigation to bookstores, shopping robots, and libraries. The LinkBaton Conductor Program for Affiliates takes care of inserting the right codes into the link, so your organization can start earning affiliate revenue from multiple on-line merchants.

LinkBaton is what we call an intelligent network technology, because it lets your visitors use standard web browsers with no plug-ins needed. There's no software to install on your server, either. By using LinkBatons on a web site, you enable each visitor to have his or her own personal experience with your site. Your visitors will be able to purchase books online or browse book-related content from more than 30 different services (Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Borders, etc.)

Here are some ideas for using LinkBaton for fundraising:

• Put reading lists and book reviews on your web site. Encourage your constituency to contribute recommendations. If you let indexing robots crawl your site, you'll find that you'll start getting traffic (and revenue!) from around the world.
• Send monthly alerts to your email list mentioning new books relevant to your mission.
• Encourage your supporters to circulate links to their own networks, and to put links benefiting you on their personal web pages.

Benefits of LinkBaton for your organization:

• Generates revenue through affiliate programs
• Promotes site usage
• compatible with e-mail
• Creates a personalized browsing experience
• Minimizes commercialism
• Easy to implement
• Free technical support
• Links to... Book Stores, Shopping Services, and Libraries
• Gives users control over their link destinations
• Supports user preferences
• Accelerates navigation
• No plug-ins required
• No registration needed
• No personal data is collected
• Saves time for webmasters and visitors