Gurwitz’s efforts highlight a new phenomenon in post-disaster charitable giving: highly specific in-kind donations, guided by the information available on the Internet and sent directly to local agencies or entities. Aid organizations discourage in-kind donations because they create logistical problems and are not always appropriate or needed. But with the Internet, someone who wants to donate, say, food or clothing instead of writing a check can find out who needs what and send it directly to them. And as sites like Craigslist show with their profusion of offers to help, the Internet may also be attracting new donors, or enabling existing donors to give in new and creative ways. Call it connected giving.

The increase of in-kind donations does not seen to have hurt monetary giving. Financial donations to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts are reportedly nearing the $600 million mark, outpacing the donations made within nine or ten days of the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the tsunami of last December. Experts attribute the unprecedented check writing to several overlapping factors: the disaster occurred at home, created so many suffering survivors, laid so clearly bare the differences between those who have something to donate and those who lost the next-to-nothing they had — and motivated many to pick up where the government, it seemed, hadn’t picked up at all.

But the same time, all over the country, people are demonstrating their immense desire to help in other ways: sometimes more creative, often more concrete. Some are wary of high-budget charities, uneasy about sending their money into a massive donation vortex; some feel that what they can afford, if anything, simply isn’t enough. (If Bangladesh can come up with $1 million, what good will my $100 do?)

Result: An enormous number of people are supplementing, or in some cases replacing, their check writing with donations of diapers, say, to ad hoc shelters in Mississippi motels too small to bleep on the FEMA radar. The Community Bookstore in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, N.Y., well-known in its neighborhood and beyond for transforming itself into a clearinghouse for donations to the Sept. 11 rescue efforts, is now collecting items for four relief locations in Louisiana and Texas. Sheila Jozami, 19, a college student who’s been volunteering at the Houston Astrodome, teamed up with a friend to collect CDs and boom boxes for displaced kids. (“I can’t imagine being a teenager and going through tough times without my music,” reads their Web site.) Sewing enthusiast Tom Farrell, 33, of Somerville, Mass., is trying to organize fellow seamsters to make duffel bags for displaced people to keep their belongings (if his plan proves workable, he’ll post the pattern online for anyone to follow).

“People want do to more,” confirms Henry “Hank” Goldstein, chair of the Giving USA Foundation. “They want to feel as if they have a direct involvement.”

For good reason, aid organizations do not welcome most in-kind donations. The Red Cross, for one, specifically discourages unsolicited in-kind donations, as do most other relief organizations and people experienced with disaster recovery. Why? Parcels require opening and sorting, a task for which there are rarely extra hands; the goods inside may be insufficient or inappropriate to the needs of a given location. In other words, giant boxes of bedroom slippers addressed “c/o Houston Astrodome” are not the best way to get your Good Samaritan on. “Mostly you get these containers of teddy bears that get in the way of food and water,” says Matt Easton, a senior associate at Human Rights First who has also worked on relief and development projects in Asia and Africa, including tsunami and hurricane recovery.

By and large, they say, money — flimsy and insubstantial as a check may feel to its writer — is the way to go. “Generally, the best thing for relief organizations is cash — giving them the finances to procure what’s needed,” says Gerald Martone, director of Humanitarian Affairs for the International Rescue Committee. He adds that in some cases, goods purchased near disaster areas — as opposed to shipped from afar — can also do their part to help boost damaged local economies.

Now, however, people are using the Internet — perhaps to an unprecedented degree — to exchange detailed, up-to-date information about precisely what supplies are needed and where, even how they should be packaged. (One person assembling donations, for example, passed along a Houston shelter’s request for clothing boxed and labeled by type and quantity — “7 days’ worth of 3-year-old boy clothes” — for easy distribution.) This type of donation does get the seal of approval. “If you’ve made contact with a hotel that tells you exactly what they need, that’s a great way to donate,” says Sheila Graham, a spokesperson for the American Red Cross.

Does this electronic end run around the major players represent a new trend toward direct charitable giving? Hard to say. Given the vast quantity of financial contributions still pouring in, it doesn’t appear that these well-informed in-kind donations are siphoning dollars away from relief efforts. Also, it’s difficult to find accurate bases of comparison. Sept. 11 — tragically, in its own way — did not leave such a vast, spread-out population of survivors in need; the remoteness of the tsunami left Americans with fewer options for direct giving. And one hopes that the scope and scale of need created by Katrina will remain unique. But experts say the Internet has clearly been a major factor not only in terms of bringing help to smaller, struggling groups, but also in motivating and mobilizing people to give of themselves in as many ways as possible. “The number of blogs and Craigslist-type postings on this topic is absolutely amazing,” says Jack Siegel, CEO of Charity Governance Consulting and author of the forthcoming “A Handbook for Non-Profit Boards, Executive Directors and Advisors: Avoiding Trouble While Doing Good.” “People who feel that donating money is not enough are able to have much more direct participation than ever in the process of giving.”

Gurwitz herself searched Craigslist to make contact with a group in need before rallying her donors; the most cyber-savvy volunteers are creating blogs and Web sites designed to gather donation specifics into one place, or even to match donors to needs. Amy Lynn Cook, 25, of Raleigh, N.C., a stay-at-home mom of two and freelance Web designer, initially created SurvivedKatrina.net as an information hub for survivors; she recruited volunteers on Craigslist to help her run the site. Now, one of the most active parts of the site is the forum for information about donating goods from tarpaulins to plus-size clothing to school supplies.

(Predictably enough, Katrina brought with her a storm surge of Internet spamming and scamming. Unless donation information has come directly from a trusted source — and a recent one, as shelters’ needs may change daily — it’s always best, where possible, to call and confirm.)

Brooklyn real estate agent Lee Solomon — who recalled stories of overgenerous donations of cold cuts for World Trade Center rescue workers that were left to rot on New York’s West Side Highway — started soliciting donated supplies only after making direct contact with several smaller relief providers (a church and a thrift shop in Alabama, for example) who, she said, “had not heard word one from FEMA or the Red Cross.” She posted information about what was needed on various local online boards, offering to gather and ship donations. Within four days, Solomon had enough donations in her office to fill seven large moving boxes. “This is the first totally ‘connected’ tragedy we have experienced in this country,” she observes, citing stories of stranded victims text-messaging for help whose relatives, in turn, posted their pleas on Nola.com. “The next logical step in this connected world: the aid that’s needed can be requested and taken care of directly.”

It took just a few hundred posts, for example, for the mourning community at Craig’s List to start encountering racist posts. Craig’s List bulletin boards, which constitute the San Francisco Bay Area’s largest online community, erupted early in the day with concerned posters looking for news and locations for blood donation, while offering condolences and expressions of shock. But within hours, the tone began to change — despite the lack of evidence connecting any specific group to the disaster. Reported site founder Craig Newmark: “I’m already telling people not to Arab/Muslim bash.” Evidently to no avail.

“These are EVIL people and the United States needs to respond accordingly! No more politically correct crap! We need to send these MUSLIM finatical freaks a message that this will not happen to our country EVER again!” one poster wrote.

“Seek out all those that do not believe in Christ and eliminate them. for if they do not believe in Christ, they do not believe in me. Purge our society of these rodents,” wrote another. “When Palestinians throw rocks, Jews throw bombs.

Jews are worse than Hitler,” responded a third.

Others on the site advised foreigners to leave the country, “FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY. America is at war now and non-us citizens will not be protected. An ACT of WAR has been declared against AMERICA it is now up to every US Citizen to take action against the enemies within our Borders.” Another posted, “America is at War and the enemies must be rooted out, removed and eliminated … before the vigilante groups take out their vengeance on anyone with an Aribic surname.”

At Metafilter, a prominent community weblog, the reactions were more muted, and site host Matthew Haughey said pessimistically, “I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone will start pointing fingers and saying racist things.” As one poster mused, “Muslims will be the first to be blamed. All 1.2 billion of us.”

The disturbing vitriol transcended racial lines, too, as others used the Web to preach the total destruction of the unidentified enemies. “We hope that swift and forceful action is taken against whomever is found to be responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,” said one e-mail distributed by the CEO of the company Coffeecup.com. “If any country is found responsible for these attacks, we call for that country’s complete destruction and annihilation…”

Still, early in the day, the vast majority of posters called for peace. “As rumors fly about the perpetrators, let’s not compound this terrible tragedy by bashing ethnic or religious groups for the acts of fringe extremists,” Craig’s List’s leaders begged. “The only antidote to terrorism — hate — is love,” posted another.

Religious communities online also were primarily calling for peace and tolerance. At Beliefnet, Christians, Buddhists and Muslims alike shared prayers for the victims and shared concern over the safety of Muslims in America. Begged one poster, “There are extremists in all nations, in all religions, in all countries. They are not represented by a single group of people.”

At Islamicity.com, Muslim-American leaders — including educators from the Islamic Education Center and the Muslim Public Affairs Council — condemned the attack, offered their condolences, and begged their readers to donate blood for victims. Other Muslim and Afghan Web sites reposted a news report from the Taliban, expressing concern for the United States. Still, anti-Afghan sentiment was on the rise online. For example, the bulletin boards at Afgha.com, a site for opponents of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, were filling with posts that called for “Death to Afghanistan” and “Bastards of Islam shall die.”

At HinduUnity.org, an anti-Muslim site, Muslims were blamed outright for the attack. “The ignorant world doesn’t realize that the problem is the religion of Islam, not Islamic Fundamentalism,” the site screamed in capital letters. “Islam promotes jihad and the destruction of non-Muslims in the Koran. Islam promises heaven to the Muslims who die in their struggle for Jihad. Wake up world!”

At Christianity.com, the site called for the world to “pray for our nation’s leaders, both those who are currently in power and those that shall be given such authority. Our rulers hold a special place of authority over us that is instigated by God.” However, the site also hosted an ironically timed interview with religious conservative Pat Robertson, apparently dated yesterday, which warned against the dangers of Islamic terrorism.

There are “militant Islamic groups that meet routinely, here in the United States, literally three or four times a month, with upwards of 4 or 5,000 people attending,” Robertson says in the interview. “The problem here is the religious activities that Islamic fundamentalists are pursuing are dedicated toward violence and toward eradicating the existence of other peoples.”

Meanwhile, educational Web sites began to discuss how to deal with the possibilities of racism and racial tension at school when children return, presumably as early as tomorrow. On CNNfyi, a news site that provides lesson plans for teachers, teachers were advised to “encourage your students to talk and write about their feelings,” but didn’t mention issues of racism or religion.

Elsewhere on the Net:

– On eBay, one tasteless prankster put up an auction to “sell the world trade building, some assembly required.” EBay yanked the auction down within minutes.

– The owner of Worldtradecenter.com posted a note that said “Domain available as memorial or for some other suitable purpose.”

– At Style.com, where fashionistas were halfway through New York Fashion week, the debate over “White boots for fall?” was quickly replaced by “Forget about Marc Jacobs, I’m devastated.”

– The ubiquitous pop-under ads for X10.com were replaced by a message that said “Sorry, no ads for now, tragedy in NYC.”