Click on the multimedia link below to view pictures of various Oxfam projects

LAST year the fashion in philanthropy was to give a goat - now the preferred gift is a village. Rich donors are being encouraged to spend thousands of pounds funding specific projects in the Third World.

In return they gain the satisfaction of knowing they have benefited a named community. Under a new Oxfam scheme they can provide water and education for a whole village in Ethiopia, help flood victims in an Indian district or fight Aids in the Chiradzulu region of Malawi.

Under Oxfam’s initiative, donors with at least £10,000 can give the money to any one of 16 projects in specified locations in the developing world.

A website to be launched later this month by Alec Reed, the employment agency tycoon, will also allow donors with at least £100,000 to browse projects listed by about 600 charities.

In the past donors would usually hand over their money to a charity or a broad campaign - such as famine relief - to spend as they chose.

The Oxfam scheme, Projects Direct, gives donors regular updates from an account manager. They receive a plaque and the chance to visit the project.

Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam, said: “Our supporters want to feel connected and understand what we’re doing on the ground.”

Projects Direct was launched this summer at the London home of Frederick Mulder, an art dealer who has signed up to the initiative. “When you’re giving £10,000, you probably want to have a sense of where the funds are going.”

Other backers include Charles Hart, who wrote the lyrics to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera.

The Big Give, Reed’s brain-child, works in a similar way to Projects Direct by matching donors prepared to stump up at least £100,000 with charitable projects that interest them. Reed has pledged to give £1m through the website in its first year and spend another £1m marketing it.

The site will go live this month and the Reed Foundation has signed up more than 600 charities, including Cancer Research, the British Red Cross, Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Foundation and Oxfam, as well as 50 philanthropists.

“It’s not as easy as it seems to give money away intelligently,” said Reed. “The Big Give is introducing intelligence into giving.”

The move by charities to do more to cater for rich philanthropists is intended to take advantage of the trend for giving set by billionaires such as Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, and Sir Tom Hunter, the Scottish tycoon.

Oxfam has long been adept at attracting celebrity backers. Last July the actresses Dame Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson, Annie Lennox, the singer, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were named among 16 global ambassadors for the charity.

Johansson was prompted to become an ambassador after a two-week trip to India and Sri Lanka with the charity in February this year. She missed the Oscars to go on the trip and visited schools and slums in Delhi.

Some recent trends in giving have proved controversial. For the past two years a number of charities have offered goats, cows and other animals that are bought as gifts and sent to farmers in the developing world.

Christian Aid, Help the Aged and Oxfam were among the charities that encouraged people to send animals.

But in some cases the animals that donors thought they were giving were never sent. Other projects were blamed for overstocking African farms with animals and ruining the grazing.

Some experts have raised concerns that the trend for project based giving may risk pandering to the wrong sentiments among the rich. Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder and director of the charity Kids Company, said a small minority of donors were giving for inappropriate reasons.

“There’s a new kind of donor which I call narcissistic philanthropists. They’re so sure they know what the answer to the social problem is, they show relatively little curiosity, they lack some humility in respecting what the workers on the street might know.”

She said a sort of “boys’ club” was developing around giving. “It is not everyone and it is very important to make the distinction.” But she added: “It’s using the vulnerability of other people to self-promote.”

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