Charity begins at home, but with a new generation of technology, charitable organisations both here and abroad are looking to stir Net surfers' consciences as they use the Web.

With Internet access growing in offices and homes, philanthropists may now find it easier to just click and donate by entering their credit card details rather than pick up a phone.

As well as raising funds directly for charities involved, websites are serving an educational role, with charities being able to make large amounts of information available to the public on their activities without having the high costs of advertising or printing.

A spokeswoman for Concern said that it received a high number of donations through the Internet for the recent Mozambique crisis and the charity was looking into new ways of developing its website.

She said the site was very important for keeping people up to date on news of the organisation's activities and the debates section of the site was used as an educational tool by many schools.

One of the problems associated with the Internet is a lack of trust on the part of donors to give their credit card details, as well as the fact that you have no way of knowing whether a given website is a bona fide charity.

A new model for fund-raising, "click to donate", was created in 1999 with the Hunger Site. The Hunger Site system allows you to click once a day on a banner from a sponsor company which will, in turn, donate a set amount of money to the charity to which it is linked.

The Hunger Site is the most popular charity site on the Web, clocking up more than 1.1 million unique visitors in March, and is the only charity site to be included in Nielsen/Netratings traffic report.

Communications officer for Trocaire, Ms Caroline Lynch, said people were looking for convenient ways to donate to charity but that they had to have confidence in the system they were using.

She said that at the moment only a small proportion of the organisation's donations came through the Net but, as an educational tool, it was extremely important. Ms Lynch said: "The site is a way of telling people why we're doing what we're doing."

For people using the Web for shopping, online charity malls are an easy way to donate without actually donating. The user can use his or her purchasing power to get companies to contribute to charity.

The malls, such as Greater Good, work by donating a percentage of your purchase total to a charity of your choice. Online retailers may pay a commission on your purchase and a percentage of that goes to charity.

Pitfalls for the generous, though not widespread, do exist. After the Alaskan Airlines crash in the United States earlier this year, a number of phoney sites appeared purporting to be accepting donations for the cause.

Capitalising on the wave of sympathy for the victims of the crash, the operators were able to rake in large amounts of money and then disappear.

Goal is planning to develop its site further and a spokeswoman for the charity, Ms Michelle Brown, said a lot of people were looking to donate online, but the main function of the site was as an information resource for the general public.

Too close an association with commercial or corporate organisations may deter charities here from linking with companies in sponsorships.

Ms Brown said that good public relations was all that charities had to promote themselves and they had to be and to appear totally independent.

Having a range of high profile patrons, including sporting greats such as John McEnroe and Pat Cash, does Goal's profile no harm, as search engines receiving requests for information on these people will bring up Goal as a match.

Spending on information campaigns, appeals and mailshots by charities can also be reduced with potential donors being directed to charities' websites where they can receive the most up to date information.

Alertnet, a free Internet-based news and communications service providing information to organisations responding to humanitarian emergencies with the aim of helping them to co-ordinate their efforts and to get aid to victims faster, was recently relauched by Reuters.

The service which has more than 100 members in 22 countries, including most Irish charities, provides a password protected zone to allow relief staff to exchange professional information about their operations as well as advice on issues including field security, communications, flights and supplies.

The service is also developing a logistics capability which would allow aid organisations to find the cheapest source for whatever food, material or other aid they need.

Merely by typing in the item, the system would identify the cheapest source of anything including toys, clothes, tents or food anywhere in the world.