Mia Hamm, Lance Armstrong, Muhammad Ali, and Tony Hawk are among 55 professional athletes extending their competitive spirit to charity fund raising this holiday season.

Athletes for Hope, a nonprofit group that helps sports players get involved in charitable causes, is ginning up competition among the athletes to see who can raise the most for their charity of choice by mid-January.

The fund-raising challenge was kicked off by Heather Mitts, a player for the Philadelphia Independence soccer team, in a video on the organization’s Web site.

Athletes who attract the most money and the largest number of gifts get prize money — up to $10,000 — for their charities. UGive, a nonprofit group that encourages young people to volunteer, is putting up much of that money, along with other sponsors.

Fans can track the athletes’ fund-raising progress on a Web page created by Global Giving,...

Charity isn’t usually on the minds of people when they propose marriage. But good causes often benefit when people look for unusual ways to pop the question.

For example, Shawn Millard donated money to WAMU 88.5 FM, a Washington public radio station, so he could broadcast his proposal to Heather Curlee live last week on Christmas Eve.

In exchange for a $500 gift, donors to the Washington station are allowed to write up to three 15-second announcements to be broadcast on a single day. Donors get to choose the day and the times when they want their messages aired.

At about 7:20 a.m. on December 24, a WAMU broadcaster read Mr. Millard’s proposal: “Today’s programs are made possible in part by Shawn Millard, who asks that his most wonderful girlfriend become his most wonderful wife.”

Apparently, he got a prompt response. Just a few hours later, at 11 a.m., another announcement was ...

A story about how a couple’s dance down the aisle to a Chris Brown song raised money to fight domestic violence drew more viewers than any other Prospecting article this year.

A YouTube video of the dance became an Internet sensation, helping to raise more than $15,000 for Wellstone Action, an antiviolence group in St. Paul, Minn. The newlyweds, Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz, chose the charity after the singer Chris Brown was charged with assaulting his then-girlfriend, Rihanna.

A story published in January about the factors that could shape fund raising in 2009 was the second most-popular story on Prospecting this year. Robert F. Sharpe, a planned-giving consultant in Minneapolis, identified a reduction in estate taxes, low investment returns, and the possibility of inflation as developments that could shape how much people would give this year.

Is it OK for charities to ban...

In a sign of how the recession is changing giving patterns, hospitals say more donors are making long-term pledges and fewer are making outright cash gifts, according to a new survey of 58 hospitals conducted by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy.

The study found a 14 percent decrease in cash gifts last year and a 5 percent increase in pledges, bequests, and other future giving commitments.

The study also showed that charities worked hard to get those cash gifts. For every dollar spent on fund raising, the hospitals collected $3.92 in cash gifts, down from $4.53 in 2007 before the economy soured. But when pledges and other commitments were taken into account, the hospitals saw returns go up from each dollar spent on fund raising, from $4.48 in 2007 to $4.63 last year.

Grants from foundations rose by 4 percent, to an average of $52,000. And, although less than a quarter of...

At many colleges and other nonprofit institutions, the number of people who donated to annual funds —and the amount they donate — has been dropping.

Fund raisers at those institutions worry about how to recover once-loyal donors. If alumni “give for three years and then skip a year, it is hard to get them back,” says Jeffrey Lindauer, director of the annual fund at Indiana University Foundation where the number of annual-fund donors has declined. “I’m not sure people will come back naturally,” Mr. Lindauer says.

At Georgetown University, some annual-fund donors have been coaxed back into the fold this year with a brand-new appeal.

The solicitation allows donors to “buy back” any years that they have missed giving to the annual fund for $25 per year. That enables them to restore a record of unbroken giving – -and to join or be reinstated into a giving club for loyal donors.

So...

People are buying less on eBay, but they’re donating more.

The online-auction site reports that its Giving Works program has generated $50-million for nonprofit groups this year, a 17 percent increase over 2008. Sales on the Web site, meanwhile, have dropped.

The uptick in donations is good news for charities and another sign of the continued growth in giving online.

eBay’s program works in a number of ways: Sellers can designate a charity to receive a portion of their sales; buyers can choose to give when they make a purchase; and charities can use the site to sell goods.

While the overall amount raised for charity this year was significant, individual donations made through the site tend to be tiny. The average donation this year was $2.28, a drop from $4.08 in 2008.

But a handful of charities have found ways to unlock big money on eBay’s Giving Works program.

The...

Data from the online fund-raising company Convio confirm what many nonprofit groups have long suspected: Donors make more online gifts on December 31 than any other day of the year.

The Austin, Tex., company processes more than 13 times as many gifts on December 31 than the daily average for the rest of the year, and more than 22 times as much money.

During the last week of the year, December 25-31, donors make nearly five times as many contributions as they do during an average week. And those gifts are 57 percent larger.

Officials at the company said that the top 10 percent of organizations using their system saw 10 times as many donations during the last week of the year and 15 times as much money donated.

They suggest this might be a helpful benchmark for organizations trying to assess the success of their year-end online fund-raising efforts.

More than one million Facebook users voted in the first round of Chase Community Giving. The financial-services company has announced the 100 small and local charities that received the most votes and will continue on to the second round of the $5-million competition.

Each of 100 organizations will receive $25,000 and will have to submit a proposal describing how it would use the $1-million top prize. Five runners-up will receive $100,000 each. In addition, an advisory board assembled for the competition will allocate a total of $1-million to its picks from the nominated charities.

Among the organizations moving on to the second round: the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, in Harpers Ferry, W. Va.; the Center for the Pacific Asian Family, in Los Angeles; the International Society for Infectious Diseases, in Brookline, Mass.; Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, in New York; the...

Charities’ confidence in the fund-raising climate has risen slightly since this summer but remains low, according to the latest biannual survey of fund raisers conducted by Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy.

The December 2009 Philanthropic Giving Index — based on the average of two measures in which fund raisers rate today’s giving climate and how confident they feel about the next six months — is 71.1.

That is an 8.7-percent increase since the summer, when the index was 65.4, and a 9.8-percent increase over this time last year, when the index stood at 64.8.

The survey was mailed to 404 fund-raising executives and consultants. Of those, 146 people responded, an overall response rate of 37.1 percent.

Fund-raisers’ assessment of their ability to raise money now is 62.5, an increase of 7.7 percent compared to six months ago when the rating was at 58, a historic low in...

The Pennsylvania Ballet will soon ask patrons to turn on their cellphones — at least during intermission and after the show.

From December 26-31, audience members at performances of “The Nutcracker” will have the opportunity to participate in a live poll via text message. At intermission, they will be able to vote for their favorite character, and after the performance, they will be able to weigh in on their favorite scene.

Monitors in the lobby of the Academy of Music will display the tally live, as will the ballet’s Web site and the Phillyfunguide, run by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

The goal of the alliance’s Turn Your Cell Phone On! campaign is to help audience members feel more engaged with arts performances, says John McInerney, a vice president at the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, who notes that neither the ballet nor the alliance will be ...