It has been a tough year financially for most Americans and like retailers pushing end of year sales that consumers won’t buy, charities are facing the same crunch.

Numbers will be down.

People never plan well, never will. No matter what planning tools are available, we just procrastinate as a nation. I found myself writing checks this week as I always do the last week of the year to meet pledges I made at the beginning of the year. I have to imagine that many early year pledges will go unmet.

The social web and Micro-Giving should start filling the void in the coming years.

This year I made an investment in EchoAge.com which is trying to change the way kid’s parties are thrown. I love the concept and it’s working.

I am an investor in Betaworks which helped get TipJoy.com going. They are really cooking up some great stuff via Twitter. This weekend John Borthwick and Kenneth Lerer, penned a great piece in The Huffington Post called ‘Micro-Giving: A New Era in Fundraising ‘. READ IT.

I am also friends with Rachel Sklar who just launched Charitini (I believe I helped get her excited about the whole Micro-Giving concept telling her about EchoAge). Go Rachel.

I have seen many other plans that will hopefully get funding and traction.

Giving is infectious. Coming off a few decades where STEALING was infectious, I am pretty excited about the opportunities. Stolen money is mostly squandered and I think MicroGiving will lead to a much healthier use of money. We can ALL MicroGive and in an era of ‘freemium’ services, we should not be afraid to ASK. I intend to in 2009.

The social web is just getting started and Micro-Giving could be one of the great stories of 2009 and beyond.