Lawyer Nathan Muyskens doesn’t have time to dial 800-numbers or fiddle with stamps. When he wants to give to his alma mater, he simply clicks a mouse.

“If I have to go find an envelope and stamp and find a checkbook and write it all out, it’s just a pain,” said Muyskens, a 1995 graduate of Kansas University’s School of Law. “I do it online because it’s easy.”

Hundreds of other KU donors are turning to the Internet for the two-step giving process. KU Endowment, the nonprofit organization that raises and manages private funds for KU, is reporting an upsurge in online giving.

“It’s the convenience and the security that, I believe, is driving people,” said Diane Silver, senior editor and team leader for the Endowment’s Web site.

The service available on the Endowment’s Web site collected 34 gifts totaling $9,155 in 2001, its first year. And the gifts have increased steadily since, with the Endowment reporting 380 gifts totaling more than $158,000 in 2005.

KU isn’t alone. Online giving is the fastest growing method of philanthropy, according to ePhilanthropy Foundation, a national nonprofit whose mission is to foster ethical use of the Internet for philanthropy. The organization estimates online giving collected $10 million for charitable organizations in the United States in 1999. That estimate rose to $2.62 billion in 2004.

Its immediacy appeals to people and draws new philanthropists to make donations, ePhilanthropy president Ted Hart said.

“People are busy,” Hart said. “It’s not their full-time job to make gifts.”

Hart said those giving online give two to three times more money than mailed donations, likely because they give using a credit card and may feel like its easier to make a higher contribution this way.

• KU Endowment web site

Click gifts to KU run the gamut. In 2005, they ranged from $50 to $25,000, Silver said, with an average of $416. Donors supported scholarships, the alumni association, athletics, cancer program initiatives, individual departments and other areas.

Interestingly, about 160 donors in 2005 reported donating to the university after simply browsing the Web.

Spurred by the rising interest, the Endowment plans to do more promotion of the online service, Silver said, and it hopes to place links to the Endowment on more KU Web pages.

Muyskens said he often donates at tax time, but there are also times when he reads something about KU and figures he’ll send a few thousand dollars rather than blow the money on, say, golf clubs.

“It’s an impulse purchase,” he said. “But you’re purchasing the future of the university.”