Fund raisers do more harm for their cause than good when they ask donors to give so that a charity can meet a budget shortfall or reach a difficult fund-raising goal, says Marc A. Pitman, author of the new book, Ask Without Fear: a Simple Guide to Connecting Donors With What Matters to Them Most.

“If you have a sincere crisis, then by all means tell your donors. Bad things happen to the best causes,” he writes. But if the organization isn’t facing a crisis, messages such as “We’re not going to make our budget if you don’t help us out” can make a bad impression, especially when repeated year after year. “Crying ‘wolf!’ is a sure-fire way to get people to ignore you,” writes Mr. Pitman, a fund-raising consultant in Waterville, Me.

A more-effective way to appeal to donors, he says, is to tell a moving story that will remind them of the impact the organization has had on their and...

As fund raisers think about how to handle tough economic times, they should ask themselves how their plans would change “if you knew for a fact that there’d be no recovery until 2010?” says Steve Meyerson, a Washington fund-raising consultant.

The answer, he told a group of charity fund raisers and marketing experts last week, should drive planning now.

Mr. Meyerson also offered other tips for raising money during a recession:

• Communicate to donors how the charity changes people’s lives. “Donors are not that interested in numbers,” he said. Rather, they want to hear that they’re helping to make a real difference in someone’s life.

• Be open. Cautious donors are going to be even more cautious during a recession, Mr. Meyerson said. The only way to deal with that is to share all information with them, including fund-raising ratios, budgets, and other details that charities ...

Network for Good, a Bethesda, Md., organization that helps charities raise money on the Internet and runs an online giving site, has acquired the ePhilanthropy Foundation, an organization that promotes ethics in online fund raising.

In addition to providing online fund-raising services, Network for Good also helps charities learn about Internet fund raising through e-mail newsletters, free teleconferences, and its online education center.

The organization says that it plans to integrate information and research from the ePhilanthropy Foundation into its training materials by the end of the summer.

John Brian McCarthy says he was shocked when he went through his mail recently and found a direct-mail solicitation for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

The reason?

It was the first piece of non-electronic communication Mr. McCarthy has received from the campaign. And it caused the Arlington, Va., marketing consultant to think about what the Obama campaign’s fund-raising strategy foreshadows for nonprofit groups.

“I’ve been donating online since February, but even the thank you’s for my online donations came in via e-mail, with no supplemental thank you/re-ask message arriving in the mail,” wrote Mr. McCarthy, on the blog maintained by his employer, Beaconfire Consulting in Arlington, Va.

“How is it that Obama for America could shatter all fund-raising records with small donations, without making direct mail a central part of their strategy?”

Mr. McCarthy says the...

An online world full of donors who are not concerned with geographic boundaries could mean American charities will soon be competing with a world of nonprofit organizations for donations, an international fund-raising expert told an audience of fund raisers and marketers at a conference in Washington last week.

Globalization is forcing nonprofit groups to adapt to a world with more choices than ever before, a greater focus on the individual, and fewer boundaries, says Jon Duschinsky, founder of Bethechange Consulting, a Paris company.

For example, he says, American donors interested in medical research can increasingly find information on the most promising trials and studies in the world, rather than limiting their money to American researchers and organizations.

Mr. Duschinsky pointed to GuideStar an online database of American nonprofit groups that helps donors find charities...

While most charities are doing a good job of meeting donors’ expectations, few are actually exceeding them, according to a new survey.

The Great American Donor Survey, conducted by Campbell Rinker, a marketing research company in Valencia, Calif., that specializes in nonprofit work, found that 83 percent of charitable donors consider the giving experience to be what they expect. Only 13 percent say the charity they supported went beyond their expectations.

The finding is important because donors talk, says Dirk Rinker, president of the survey firm. “How much donors are communicating about their giving is just astounding to me,” he says.

Of the 3,400 donors surveyed, 66 percent said they occasionally recommend one of their favorite charities to a friend or family member, and 19 percent said they frequently do so.

Says Mr. Rinker, “Word of mouth is your best form of advertising.”...

A new mutual fund gives investors the opportunity to become donors — at the same time.

The Davlin Philanthropic Fund lets investors donate to charity a significant portion of the fees typically paid for managing the fund, while retaining ownership of the principal and any financial returns the investment earns.

Investors can currently select up to three charitable beneficiaries from a list of roughly 300 nonprofit organizations, including Easter Seals, the Salvation Army, and the World Wildlife Fund. The mutual fund says that it is also open to adding other qualified charities to the list, at the suggestion of its investors.

At the start, 0.50 percent of assets will be donated, out of fees totaling roughly 1.65 percent. The mutual fund’s founders hope that as the total amount of money under management grows, they will be able to increase the percentage that is contributed....

Kimberly Lauth, a consultant who specializes in nonprofit endowments, offers three tips to fund raisers who want to convert annual donors into those who make endowment gifts.

Ms. Lauth, owner of Nonprofit Outfitters, Community Benefit Consulting, a Knoxville, Tenn., was one of three experts who took questions from Chronicle readers today during a live discussion.

Among her suggestions:

• “Make sure that all your marketing materials and appeals mention the endowment.”

• “Start an endowment-giving recognition program. Encourage people to let you know when they have made a bequest.”

• “Ask— sometimes I think we spend all of our time relationship building and forget that we need to actually ask for the gift.”

For more suggestions, read the transcript. of the discussion.

An online “museum of fund raising” has been created to serve as a free reservoir of fund-raising materials that can be used by nonprofit officials around the world.

The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration, seeks to serve as an archive that fund raisers can turn to for ideas from some of the best and most effective campaigns and other projects to raise money.

To date, the Web site has posted detailed case histories and solicitation materials from 116 fund-raising entities. One notable example is an ancient Japanese fund-raising appeal written in 1235 by a Zen master. It was submitted to the site by Mal Warwick, a direct-marketing consultant in San Francisco.

The site also features book reviews, articles, essays, tips, and videos from fund-raising experts and consultants.

The online archive was created by the SOFII Foundation, a British charity established by Ken...

Fund raisers are growing more worried that the economy is starting to drag giving down, according to the new Philanthropic Giving Index report released today by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Indiana University regularly conducts a study of 140 fund raisers from around the country to assess how fund raising is going now and what their expectations are for the future. Indiana researchers then come up with a score that resembles the consumer confidence index.

The most-recent score for the fund-raising index is 82.8, which is a decrease of 6 percent from what it was six months ago and 4.7 percent from year ago. That is not nearly as pessimistic as at it was at the lowest point in the history of the index. In the summer of 2003, fund raisers registered a score of 72.3. The highest score was a rating of 94.6 in December 1999, when the dot-com boom was fueling the...