The withering-away of corporate and government giving is a major topic of conversation terror and insomnia in theaters and other nonprofits. Some folks are holding their breath and waiting for the economy to come back, hoping the grants will come back, too. Others are glumly admitting that even when the economy improves, the grants may never return—and that they have to invent entirely new ways of finding money.

The Seattle Foundation has adopted (after other cities) a new way of helping nonprofits find money: GiveBig.

The Foundation has pulled together $500,000 in corporate money and in-kind donations—from Boeing, JP Morgan, the Sounders, et al.—to use as a "stretch pool." On June 23, from 7 am to midnight, any donations made via the Seattle Foundation's website will be "stretched" with that half-million*.

You can donate to On the Boards, Planned Parenthood, FareStart, the Satori Group, and tons and tons of other nonprofits. (The portal to all of the nonprofits you can donate to is here.)

Mary Grace Roske of the Seattle Foundation says this kind of fund-raising has brought good results in Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Minnesota, where their $500,000 stretch pools, plus the individual donations, have raised millions of dollars in a day.

The Foundation will also be giving out $17,000 in "golden tickets"—each hour, they'll randomly pick a nonprofit that has been donated to in the past hour and hand them an extra $1,000, giving the day a little game-show thrill. Read more about GiveBig here.

* Meaning, the stretch money will be handed out to the non-profits on a prorated basis instead of a dollar-for-dollar match—if you make 5% of the total money raised on GiveBig day, you get 5% of the stretch pool. Mary Grace Roske of the Seattle Foundation said they decided to go with a "stretch" model instead of a "match" model because sometimes dollar-for-dollar matching funds get used up within the first hour of a fundraising drive and all the organizations who get donated to after that hour don't get the benefit of matching funds. (Thanks to Slog tipper Alex.)