Tom Williams gave up a big Silicon Valley salary for a cramped office in Vancouver's downtown east side in order to change the way the world donates money.

A computer and software marketing whiz, Williams started a computer business at 12 and quit school in grade eight. Apple Computer recruited him to become one of the company's biggest stars by age 14.

Such successes are the envy of many twice his age.

But it wasn't enough, said Williams, now 27. What was missing was something that could give his life meaning.

So, almost two years ago, the Victoria, B.C. native launched GiveMeaning.com, an online intermediary between charities and people who want to make charitable donations.

Registered charities have received more than $500,000 from GiveMeaning.com since it launched in December 2004. Because advertising covers operating costs, the site hands over every cent it raises.

The idea came to Williams when he watched his mother fret about wanting to donate to a charity online. She didn't trust using her credit card on the Internet.

She wasn't reassured when he said it was safe, and he realized that a leap of faith regarding the safety of online transactions was only the first in a series of stumbling blocks for people who wanted to donate online.

A big hurdle was a not ill-deserved perception of what happens to people's personal information when they donate to a charity or register for something online.

"It's the expectation of making my donation and suddenly getting spammed with 10 other charities' requests for money, never mind all the emails that come in from that charity that I don't want to see," Williams explained. "So there's a reluctance to give online because of these bad experiences."

GiveMeaning.com allows donors to be anonymous to the charity to which they want to donate, he said. The site eliminates one excuse why people can say, 'You know, I wanted to give, but I didn't' because of misgivings about ending up on marketing lists.

The website is a shopping list of charities. Groups and individuals can post individual projects, such as replacing a school in Africa. People choose a charity, and donate what they can.

Williams calls it five-dollar philanthropy.

"This is real community, brick by brick, $5 by $5, five minutes by five minutes, making a difference to what you care about," he said.

Another stumbling block is that people who may have only small donations to give may feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the need. The perception is that their donation is too small to make a difference.

"Five bucks can make a difference," Willams said. "Why? Because it's not just your five bucks. Through the power of the Internet it's your five and my five and somebody else's hundred and so on."

Another hurdle for potential donors is that the tragedies charities work to address are often so huge that people are overwhelmed with the scale of the problem. GiveMeaning.com allows charities, individuals and groups to collect money for discrete and small projects.

"By carving off small chunks of the bigger problem ... it seems more addressable to us, the everyday donor or everyday person," he said. "If they (can) do that one small thing, what we believe is that they will be compelled to another small thing and those small steps, in aggregate, result in big change."

While many organizations may not want an intermediary, they're starting to understand that "increasingly, donors do," Williams said.

And GiveMeaning.com solves a problem for charities that aren't equipped to accept small donations, he said.

Earlier this month, the online social network for charitable donations extended its services to our neighbors to the south. GiveMeaning.com can now issue U.S. tax receipts.

William's next idea is to revamp the Halloween coin campaign abandoned by UNICEF.

"The idea is that the kid gets to be involved with giving this away, they get to choose what's important to them," he said.

With a report by CTV's Todd Battis