# How Your Corporation Can Participate

It's simple, and fun too! For your corporation to participate, you need to do the following:

- Adopt a Charity
- Pledge Some Money
- Gather Information About the Charity
- Get Us the Information
- Watch the Bits Fly

  ## Adopt a Charity

  Any non-profit or other governmental group (e.g., a library, or community center) qualifies. You should get the group's permission to put information about them on-line.

  ## Pledge Some Money

  You can pledge any amount you want. Our initial contributions were for $25,000 from a large corporation and $5,000 from a medium-sized business. Your contribution will be in the form of a check to the Internet Multicasting Service which will escrow the money in a special account.

  Your account will be charged 10 cents for every "hit" as people on the Internet visit the charity. Chances are pretty good that all the money will be spent. If not, you'll get any unspent money back in a check that will be written the first week of January. The charity also receives a check during the first week of January.

  The Internet Multicasting Service is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation chartered in Delaware with offices in the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The group has a well-established reputation and receives funding from groups such as the National Science Foundation, NASA, Sun, MCI, and others.

  ## Gather Information About the Charity

  To construct a nice WWW page about the charity, start with gathering any existing printed information. Look for an annual report, or local articles about the charity, or a brochure. If you can find slides or photos in a press kit, those are nice as well. If you're really lucky, the charity might even have an ASCII disk of their annual report available.

  Next is to the web page describing the group. You can start that process yourself, or you can send us the information and we'll construct the page. Needless to say, if we do it, don't expect as much time being spent on the page as if you have your own volunteers: our elves are really burning the midnight oil this Christmas season.

  If you want us to do it, you'll simply gather as much information as you can and send it to us. If you want to construct the pages yourself, please remember that we're going to edit for consistency. In particular, sponsor acknowledgements should be at the very end of the page and will all have a standard format that will point back to your own home system. Send mail to

  ## Get Us the Information

  Your check and contact information for your corporation and the charity should be sent to:

  Your letter should include either a packet of materials describing the charity or the electronic mail address of your contact. We will not put a charity on-line until the check has been received and the web pages are fully constructed. You need to get us adequate information so that we can use your own web pages or do the construction ourselves.

  We will acknowledge your contribution by sending you a letter or electronic mail. During the first week of January, we will send you a letter or electronic mail message which will tell you how many "visits" were made on your page and will reimburse any unspent funds.

  The Internet Multicasting Service is not charging an administrative fee for this. The full amount of the funds sent to us will be disbursed to the charities or back to the corporate sponsors. We are keeping any interest accumulated, but that will be a small amount which we intend to use to defray some of our expenses. The Internet Multicasting Service is donating the staff time needed to keep the project going.

  ## Watch the Bits Fly