As we know, time are making it harder for charities to raise funds in the current economic downturn and traditional methods aren't working. For me, economic downturn should never be an excuse to keep them from continuing to ask for money. They should work harder. 

The viral marketing technique, being an e-mail “pass along” program, makes it rather more difficult to collect donations from distant and uncaring benefactors. That's why a lot of organizations hope and rely on social networking and other means like holiday greeting cards campaign, to have e-mail recipients send what they receive to others. Whatever the results, we should just always hope for the best.

I agree that in the present condition that we had, it is very hard t conduct a fund raising, knowing that they too are suffering from financial trouble, if some big companies collapsed how much more those ordinary individual. In today's economy, there is a severe recession and financial shortfall even the credit card companies are less willing to lend you money at ridiculous rates. The Federal Reserve has pumped billions into finance companies to reverse the trend, but it hasn't worked as well as intended, so naturally people turn to short term loans   for debt relief.