Does your nonprofit organization have people going to bat for it in the hallways of your state house or in the corridors of Congress?

Barry Hessenius, a charity consultant and former executive director of the California Arts Council, thinks it could be a good idea.

Besides writing Barry’s Blog he also just finished writing a book: Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits.

“I wrote this book as a ‘how to’ tutorial on lobbying but found myself including an argument as to why nonprofit leaders should embrace this function,” he writes on his blog. “For far too long, I think nonprofits have been the Oliver Twists in the political spectrum – holding their little bowls meekly in front of them, begging ‘Please, sir, can I have some more.’”

Mr. Hessenius says nonprofit organizations can compete with “deep-pocketed special interest groups” but acknowledges that it requires money to get access to...

What does it mean when even erstwhile hippies are getting angry at homeless people?

Joel John Roberts, chief executive officer at Partners and People Assisting the Homeless, a social-services charity in Los Angeles, writes in his LA’s Homeless Blog that it’s just further proof that folks are “tired of being compassionate without real results” when it comes to confronting the seemingly intractable issue of homelessness.

Mr. Roberts links to a recent newspaper article describing how many veteran residents of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which had been ground zero for the rootless “flower children” during the 1960’s, are complaining about the current crop of young people living on the streets.

“My generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior,” one resident and self-identified former “hippie” is quoted as saying.

“This person is...

Is there an art to “cause marketing”—the mutually beneficial collaboration between a for-profit business and a charity?

Joe Waters, director of cause and event marketing at Boston Medical Center, thinks so. In his Selfish Giving blog he dissects what he sees as an artful example of a charity-business collaboration that happens, itself, to involve art.

The art dealer Guy Wildenstein is holding a sizable Monet exhibit at his commercial gallery in New York and charging a $10 admission fee.

The proceeds benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The goal is to raise $300,000, and Mr. Wildenstein—whose mother-in-law died of breast cancer—is halfway there.

Mr. Waters praises Mr. Wildenstein’s creativity. Asking people to pay to enter a commercial gallery, he says, is “kinda like charging admission to enter a Wal-Mart.”

“Mr. Wildenstein has found a way to raise money that...

Are too many charity leaders obsessed with attracting young donors? Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle/Domain, a fund-raising consulting firm, thinks so.

“Seriously, it’s time to give up on the under-30 group and move on” he writes in his Donor Power Blog “The reason young people aren’t present in large numbers among donors is not money. It’s their age.”

They just aren’t “there” yet, Mr. Brooks adds. They “seldom” give and “don’t make lasting partnerships with charities.” Meanwhile, “older people dominate the ranks of donors.”

Mr. Brooks is aware that not everyone is so complacent with this generation gap. He quotes from the charity consultant Barry Hessenius’s Barry’s Blog where much has been made about a study showing that California arts organizations are doing little to attract young patrons and donors.

Mr. Brooks says nonprofit groups should get over their “fixation”...

Some charities don’t do enough to hang on to their donors, says the Donor Power Blog written by Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle/Domain, an advertising and marketing agency that serves nonprofit organizations.

Mr. Brooks takes note of a study posted on a blog dedicated to customer service issues that explores reasons people cease doing business with a company. (Mr. Brooks simply says substitute “donor” for “customer” to make this information relevant for the charity world.)

Far and away the greatest reason a customer broke ties with a business–- 68 percent of the time — was because of “an attitude of indifference from someone representing the company.”

Mr. Brooks says for charities such indifference could be come in the form of late (or nonexistent) receipts, lousy thank-you letters, or a failure to report back with specifics on how a donation helped the cause.

“They’re ...

Who says starting a charity can’t be an absolutely glamorous undertaking?

Not Rachel Doyle. She’s the founder of GlamourGals, a five-year-old charity in Commack, N.Y., that organizes teenagers to volunteer to visit nursing homes to give free makeovers and facials to the women in residence.

The Web site of the association of young charity leaders known as Future Leaders of Philanthropy—or FLIP conducted an interview with Ms. Doyle and her rapidly growing group.

She held her first advisory board meeting in a broom closet on her college campus, she says. Now the organization has some 1,000 volunteers in 50 chapters across seven states.

It hopes to double in size in the next two years and expand its online presence. “We want to create the model for nonprofit-chapter social networking,” says Ms. Doyle. “We created GGChapters, the beginning of our GG virtual community for volunteer...

Barry Hessenius, charity consultant and former executive director of the California Arts Council, still has generational succession on his brain.

Last week his Barry’s Blog discussed a report he recently wrapped up that examined what arts charities in California were doing to attract young people—not just as patrons, but as donors, staff members, and volunteers. The answer, in a nutshell, was not much. Given California’s size and diversity, Mr. Hessenius feels this troubling finding probably applies to arts organizations nationwide.

In his latest posting he discusses a series of “open forums” recently held across the state to discuss the report’s findings. Young attendees (generally defined as anyone younger than 30) mentioned low pay, long hours, and a desire “to make a difference” and not just get mired in menial work, as some of things that discouraged them from getting involved...

“So why do they divorce?” asks the veteran fund-raising consultant Tom Belford on the blog The Agitator

Mr. Belford is not wondering why couples go bust but what causes charities to split less than happily with their hired consultants.

A Chronicle of Philanthropy article got him thinking about the problem. So, too, did some glowing testimonials from nonprofit groups he read on marketing promotions by consultants.

Mr. Belford has his theories on how happy marriages between charities and consultants sometimes go south:

• The organization or consultant gets “intellectually lazy” and stuck in routines.

• The consultant lets service lag, perhaps after a staff change.

• The charity changes leaders and the new head honchos want to “rattle the cage” or bring in a colleague from the past.

• The charity outgrows its need for a consultant, perhaps as the skills of...

Nonprofit leaders have long been discussing the challenges they face seeking out and grooming the next generation of charity administrators as the baby boomers begin heading into retirement. But are some parts of the nonprofit world doing a better job than others in preparing to bring new blood on board?

Barry Hessenius, a charity consultant and former executive director of the California Arts Council, thinks so. He writes in Barry’s Blog that arts organizations in particular are “courting disaster” by failing to make “generational succession issues” a higher priority.

Mr. Hessenius is author of the report, “Involving Youth in Arts Organizaitons: A Call to Action,” commissioned by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and released this month. It examined what, if anything, arts charities in California are doing to attract young people to their causes. The answer:...

Charities that support scientific or medical research should always be looking for eye-catching ways to remind donors that their gifts keep the laboratory work in motion, says Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle/Domain, an advertising agency serving nonprofit organizations, on Donor Power Blog

Maybe such groups could take a tip from the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Australia, which placed a researcher inside a vending machine.

Well, sort of.

Mr. Brooks gives kudos to this “ambient stunt” where a man in white lab coat holding test tubes sits within a glass booth labeled “MS Laboratory.” This simulated scientist is motionless until someone deposits money in slot in front of the booth, whereupon he gets to work, tinkering with the test tubes and what not. After a while he falls motionless again, awaiting further donations.

“Okay, it’s pretty corny” Mr. Brooks writes of the ...