Access Air delivers ISTAT Airlink first shipment of the antibiotic Azithromycin, from Toronto, Canada to Blantyre, Malawi.

The Wall Street Journal

By DANIEL MICHAELS

In the next few days, airplane financier Bob Brown will fly two filtration systems that make dirty water drinkable to earthquake-ravaged Indonesia. The shipment is part of a wider corporate-philanthropy project that aims to take advantage of empty airline seats and cargo space.

Mr. Brown and some fellow plane financiers created ISTAT AirLink over the last year, aiming to put huge amounts of unused space on airplanes to better use. Most airlines already support international aid agencies by carrying passengers and cargo for them, but usually do it on an ad-hoc basis. AirLink aims to make contributions simpler and faster; its Web site for example, allows aid agencies to list people, medicine and supplies they need shipped, and lets airlines post spare seats or cargo capacity.

AirLink "promises to improve the efficiency of emergency response operations," said Joy Portella, spokeswoman for Mercy Corps, a global aid agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Mercy Corps participated in AirLink's first shipment, 300 pounds of antibiotics carried from Toronto to rural Malawi in August by Air Canada and South African Airways. Access Air Inc., a Canadian forwarder, organized the logistics. The companies said the project fit within their ongoing charitable efforts.

Many airlines world-wide cooperate with nonprofit organizations. Japan Airlines, for example, has offered to carry supplies and aid workers to Indonesia in response to the earthquake. Carriers also have continuing relations with charities. In the U.S., Delta Air Lines Inc., UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and US Airways Group Inc. all help the Make a Wish Foundation, which takes critically ill children on trips to places such as the Grand Canyon. Dutch cargo carrier TNT NV works closely with the United Nations' World Food Program, Fedex Corp. works with a number of charities, and DHL International GmbH cooperates with Mercy Corps, among other nonprofits.

In good economic times, charitable assistance can generate tax deductions in the U.S., which provides an incentive for corporate giving in all industries. But with taxable profits evaporating amid the financial crisis and most companies slashing head counts, cutting staff who might otherwise handle charitable requests, corporate generosity has suffered overall. Giving USA Foundation, which tracks donations in the U.S., estimates corporate donations dropped 8% on an inflation-adjusted basis in 2008 from 2007, faster than the 5.7% drop in the same period for giving overall.

Many companies want to conserve cash, and so have shifted from financial donations to in-kind contributions, according to Patrick Rooney, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University in Indianapolis. For airlines, that's a natural, since airplane tickets and cargo shipments are always in demand, and developing countries can be extremely expensive to reach.

But moving anything by air burns fuel and demands staff time for security checks and paperwork, all of which entail costs for carriers. So AirLink aims to make participation very easy for airlines. It also allows carriers to charge NGOs for some costs, although such fees will generally be far lower than commercial rates.

"If we can save an NGO a dollar in cost, that should flow right through to the people they're serving," said Mr. Brown, a founder of Vx Capital Partners, a small airplane-leasing company in San Francisco. Mr. Brown has served as a director of the charitable foundation of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Traders, or ISTAT, an industry group for companies that own, trade and finance airplanes. The foundation mainly granted scholarships for education related to aviation and has occasionally made charitable contributions.

Early last year, Mr. Brown and his colleagues decided to put ISTAT members' deep knowledge of aviation to better philanthropic use by directly helping aid agencies, rather than simply making financial donations.

Write to Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B5