For 60 years, UNICEF has been sending kids door-to-door with Halloween donation boxes. While the money goes to a good cause -- providing food and medicine for needy children -- the methodology of having to walk from house to house seems so, well, 20th-century.
Now the youngsters can do their trick-or-treat fundraising without ever leaving their computers. They're able to collect online donations via interactive Web pages that can include costumed characters and even virtual Halloween parties. The kids promote the sites through e-mail, Facebook, Twitter or other social media.
Halloween isn't until the end of the month, of course, but the e-trick-or-treaters are being encouraged to start the process now, beginning with registering for a UNICEF website. Kids and their parents can go to www.trickortreatforunicef.org and follow links, or use www.startribune.com/a699 to go straight to the registration page.
If you have one of those old-fashioned kids who insist on doing the collecting face-to-face, don't worry; they haven't been shut out of the electronic age. The iconic orange collection boxes have a new addition this year: a tag that can be scanned with a smartphone to set up an electronic donation.
