Building a charitable community--online.

The Little Heroes Foundation, which offers financial and psychological aide to families who have suffered the deaths of small children, is run by its founder from her kitchen table in the San Fernando Valley.

And Heather Aitken doesn’t have even a fax machine. Obviously, she can’t afford to orchestrate elaborate fund-raising events.

This month, though, Little Heroes is picking up some much-needed exposure and assistance. It is being profiled on the Internet as part of the Golden Triangle Neighbors Project, a series of online auctions designed to benefit 26 charities, mostly around Los Angeles.

This nontraditional fund-raising effort was co-created by Peter Harkins, a 59-year-old Canoga Park resident who has worked with nonprofit groups for 30 years. It is similar to commercial online auctions, which have become increasingly popular in the last two years.

Nonprofit auctions are nothing new, but they most commonly are held by individual charities--typically large ones.

For Golden Triangle, Harkins wants to involve a whole group of charities--including some very small ones--that could not only benefit from the auctions, but also develop into a network of nonprofits that can help each other later--if not financially, with free services such as referrals and publicity.

“What I want to do is go to different cities and build communities,” says Harkins, who is donating his efforts. He hopes to be paid for his services in the future by private or public entities that may be interested in his approach.

The organizations being profiled range widely in size and mission, from Little Heroes to the mid-sized Children of Hope Foundation, which takes in homeless families in downtown Los Angeles, to public radio station KLON-FM.

Organizations do not compete for the same dollars because each benefits only from the sale of items earmarked for it by donors, many of whom are Internet browsers.

Information about each charity is available at https://www.golden-triangle.org. To donate or to bid on items, go to https://www.WebCharity.com, operated by the company facilitating Golden Triangle’s auctions for a percentage of the take and exposure for its other services.

The auctions emphasize experiences rather than merchandise, Harkins says. Items sold so far include a tour of the Shambala Wildlife Preserve in Acton to benefit the L.A. County Library Foundation. The tour, which sold for $225, was donated by Best Friends, a Southwestern animal-rights organization based in Utah.

Also up for bid to help the library foundation is a lunch for four with comedian Buddy Hackett, who has volunteered to host whoever pays at least $275. Harkins also says he is talking to actor Edward James Olmos about possibly filming a scene with whoever pledges the most to East Los Angeles College.

No one has donated items for Little Heroes yet, but for Aitken, just having her message on the Internet is a start.

“Little Heroes hasn’t been around as long as other groups,” she notes. “We need to be out there on the Internet so people can know what we are doing.”

Even with minimal equipment and resources, Aitken--who started Little Heroes after her infant son died of a reaction to a routine diphtheria-tetanus vaccination--has been able to help families find low-cost funeral services and counseling.

Even as Aitken is just getting started on the online charity circuit, other groups are beginning to feel at home there. So far, Harkins’ auctions have raised $5,000, with about $3,000 of it going to the library foundation.

And the use of nonprofit online auctions is likely to increase.

“It’s cheap, and you can reach more people,” says Efraim Turban, professor of information systems at Cal State Long Beach. “For charity organizations, I’m sure it will become popular very, very quickly.”