Calgary agencies working with the homeless and hungry are expanding their reach into the city’s e-commerce and dot-com communities.

While it’s one of the fastest-growing aspects of Calgary’s booming economy, some agencies say Internet-based companies are still relatively invisible as a business sector on the charity scene.

“It’s remarkably small at this point. In fact, I wouldn’t really know how to measure it,” notes Dermot Baldwin, director of the Calgary Drop-In Centre.

“There has really not been any noticeable sector that we could identify as high-tech that donates to us.”

Similar stories can be heard this season at the Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank and the Salvation Army.

While larger companies including Nortel, TELUS, Bell Intrigna, EDS, various major banks and energy industry titans such as Shell Canada and Petro-Canada are well represented by employee volunteers and charitable contributions this holiday season, many small and medium-sized dot-coms and other high-tech companies based in Calgary have yet to make their mark on the charity scene in a meaningful way.

But all that could change with a new initiative to reach out to online companies where they live — a sort of charity drive in cyberspace.

This past week, the Calgary Workplace Volunteer Council, under the leadership of Volunteer Calgary, launched a Web site www.volunteercalgary.ab.ca/CWVC/index.html which outlines the benefits of corporate volunteerism and to offer tips to employees and managers who want to get involved. The council, which represents 25 corporations and non-profit organizations, hopes the increased online presence will help the high-tech sector better respond to Calgary’s charitable needs.

“You have to talk to them (high-tech companies) in the language that they use and the arenas they live in,” says Ian Kershaw, a consultant who works with Volunteer Calgary. “If they eat, sleep and breathe dot-com-type activities in the virtual world, perhaps we ought to be approaching them in the virtual world.”

Diane Quinton, vice-chair of the council and manager of employee community programs for TELUS in Alberta, says the global economy focus of dot-coms, as well as their smaller size and current economic challenges, may be a contributing factor to their presence — or lack of — on Calgary’s charity scene.

“The community expectations of them may not be the same, as they don’t necessarily have a physical presence,” says Quinton. “You see the TELUS or the Shell buildings, and you know those people are there, and you want to know what they’re doing. But a lot of the other organizations, like the dot-coms, may be high tech but working out of their homes.”

Virtual volunteering and giving is also becoming a real-time option for both high-tech and traditional industry employees. Nationally, the charity.ca Web site was founded in December 1999, by philanthropist and businessman Richard Ivey and by the NRG Group, an Internet incubator based in Toronto. Charity.ca works with both donors and representatives from charities to provide an online service that benefits Canadian charities and the donors who support them.

Volunteer Calgary’s own Web site, www.volunteercalgary.ab.ca, also lists opportunities to donate time and expertise, and the group just received a $26,000 lottery board grant to explore the virtual volunteering model.

“If we have people making a living in the virtual world, let’s not try and force them into the traditional mold,” says Kershaw, who notes many agencies need high-tech help like Web-site development or computer expertise, and volunteers may be just as useful working from home in these areas.

“We have to recognize and nurture where the interests lie with some of these companies, and meet them — as oppose to expect them to come and do it our way.”

Many e-commerce and startup companies in Calgary are already active contributors on a smaller scale. At Calgary Technologies Inc., a cluster of high-tech companies regularly chip in to the food bank and other charities, and money is collected from employees at almost every Christmas function.

“I think they may not make a big show of it, and that’s the difference,” says CTI’s Charles Reichert, of the smaller tech startups. “They encourage their people to (contribute), but they don’t necessarily send out a press release.”

Software design company CDL Systems is one of the firms based at CTI that has adopted a family through Discovery House, which helps abused women and their children. Claudette Blais says the 16-employee company has been helping supply food hampers for several years, but she believes other smaller tech companies may not yet have the established revenue to launch similar corporate sponsorships.

At EyeWire, which provides software tools, e-design and other online visual content, company spokesman Tabitha Beaton agrees Calgary’s technology community needs to step up to the plate when it comes to volunteerism and corporate giving.

“With the high-tech sector thriving so well here, we all need to figure out how we can give back to a city that has given us so much in being able to work effectively here and be successful in what we’re doing,” she says.

The 130-member company contributes clothing, cash and profits from recycled pop cans to the Calgary Drop-In Centre.

Calgary has hundreds of first-generation multi-millionaires in many sectors, including oil and gas, real estate and high-tech, notes former Calgary Foundation board of director Harold Millican. But the young entrepreneurs “are more interested in golf tournaments and galas” to raise money for charity, he observes.

“Many are more interested in making money at this stage of their lives than contributing,” says Millican. “That younger group of people have been, for all intents and purposes, non-contributors to the Calgary Foundation and other charities.”

The United Way is also making a special effort to better connect with high-tech and dot-com companies in Calgary. Patti Howlett, resource development associate in the high-tech division, says while more than 100 technology companies, including Bell Intrigna, Computing Devices Canada, Nortel and EDS support the United Way, the agency is now reaching out to smaller businesses and start-ups.

“We believe there is as much interest in philanthropy amongst the employees of those companies as there is in the oil companies,” says Howlett, who notes computer security specialists JAWZ Inc. and technology incubator VerticalBuilder, are among two local high-tech companies pitching in to help the United Way this year.

“The United Way believes our future is more than the companies that we do a lot of work with downtown,” adds Howlett. “We have to reach out to these other companies in different ways.”

WHAT CAN YOUR COMPANY DO?

* SALVATION ARMY:

“In all honesty, we can get volunteers. We can’t always get money,” says Andrea Timmer at the Salvation Army. “Calgary is the volunteer capital, and they’re not in short supply. But it’s the money that lets the volunteer programs run.”

How can businesses help? “By freeing up more philanthropic dollars and allowing the charities to administer the money according to the charity’s needs.”

The Salvation Army has an annual budget of $3.5 million with about $740,000 coming from the corporate community. They plan to distribute 3,000 family hampers this Christmas.

Online information: www.sallynetalta.com/

* CALGARY INTER-FAITH FOOD BANK:

The Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank will give out more than 6,000 hampers this month, with half their total donations coming from the corporate community, including regular contributors TELUS and Nortel. Every day in December, more than a dozen volunteers sort food, pack hampers, unload trucks and even wash the floors. “There’s a lot of people here from the oil and gas (industry),” says spokeswoman Angela Knight.

Online information: www.cadvision.com/foodbank/

* THE CALGARY DROP-IN CENTRE:

Drop-In Centre director Dermot Baldwin estimates the business community helps pay for half of the agency’s operation. But he’s hearing “no” more than “yes” these days.

“We’re competing with many, many more agencies and societies and non-profits than we ever used to,” says Baldwin.

“There’s more competition, and more regulations on the part of the corporate world saying why you can’t have something. What they’ve done is to establish policies that would eliminate large numbers of organizations being eligible, simply because they’re trying to find ways to gear down the requests to short lists.”

The Calgary Drop-In Centre provides about 1,500 meals a day.

They operate five facilities around town, housing more than 475 people a night. As well as cash, they have an immediate need for food, juice, underwear and socks.

Online information: www.cadvision.com/cdic/