Year after year, Susan Scribner, a Long Beach, Calif., fund-raising consultant, sits through all 21 hours of actor Jerry Lewis’s annual telethon to raise money to fight muscular dystrophy — even though the aging star annoys her with his tired jokes and other antics.

Ms. Scribner says the Labor Day telethon is can’t-miss television because she gets loads of fund-raising ideas from what she calls “the incredible Jerry Lewis Fundraising Machine.”

In a short essay entitled “Jerry Lewis, You Drive Me Nuts, Thank You,” Ms. Scribner describes some things she took away from this year’s broadcast, which had raised $60.5-million by the time it ended on Monday at 6 p.m.

For example, this year’s show featured information on how muscular dystrophy affects the entire family, not just the person with the disease. That prompted Ms. Scribner to think that a battered women’s shelter might do...

GlobalGiving, a site that connects donors with more than 600 charities working in dozens of countries, has sparked a surge of donations with a series of fund-raising contests.

The latest Global Open Challenge 2009, a month-long contest that ends on September 18, involves 167 of the charities on the organization’s site. They are competing to see which group can raise the most money through the Web site. The goal is to persuade donors and others associated with a charity to solicit friends, relatives and others.

Charities that win first, second, and third place will receive $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000, respectively, from GlobalGiving. And the organization that has the most donors will win another prize of $3,000. To qualify to win, competing organizations must raise at least $4,000 from 50 donors.

More than $180,000 has been raised in the current contest. Now in first place: the

Charities worldwide are invited to compete in a new competition to find the best online fund-raising video.

The Gold Star Award for Nonprofit Video Advertising will be presented by the Resource Alliance, organizers of an international conference on fund raising held in the Netherlands each year, and RAPP, a brand-marketing consulting firm. Both organizations are based in London.

Videos must be submitted by September 25. Entries must be under three minutes long, be uploaded onto YouTube, and have premiered in the previous 18 months. More rules and an online entry form are available on the contest Web site.

The winning video will be selected by a live audience vote at the International Fundraising Conference in October. In years past, the gathering has drawn more than 900 participants from some 50 countries.

Finalists will receive a discount on this year’s conference fee, while...

Grant seekers should make a point of calling foundations and other grant makers — before submitting a grant proposal, advises Arlene Spencer, a grant-proposal writer in her blog, The Grant Plant.

First, however, grant seekers should make a point of finding out if the grant maker accepts calls, she says. If so, they should call the fund and think of it as “simply a phone call to initiate the application process,” she writes.

After briefly describing their plan for spending the money, grant seekers should ask whether there are any preferences or other things the grant maker looks for that are not listed in the organization’s giving guidelines, says Ms. Spencer. She also suggests asking whether there are any staff or board members who have a personal interest in the grant seeker’s work.

Ms. Spencer also recommends that grant seekers prepare for such calls by jotting down several...

Wellstone Action, an antiviolence charity in St. Paul, Minn., has raised $15,000 — and donations are still flowing in — from a couple’s wedding video that has become an Internet sensation.

Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz, both 28, got married this summer in St. Paul. Instead of the usual solemn wedding procession, the entire wedding party, along with the bride and groom, boogied down the aisle of the church with the song “Forever,” by Chris Brown, blaring in the background.

Since the couple posted their video on YouTube last month, it has become wildly popular, with nearly 20 million downloads and comments from viewers all over the world. “The Today Show” invited Ms. Peterson (who’s keeping her maiden name) and Mr. Heinz to talk about the video on the air, and the couple and their wedding party were invited to repeat their dance moves in a subsequent episode of the show.

Because the...

A new Web site lets people play free online games and raise money for charity at the same time.

GamesThatGive, as the site is called, is now in beta testing and is expected to formally start operations next month to benefit up to 16 charities selected by creators of the site.

Here’s how it works: People play free games such as Solitaire and Sudoku on the site and earn points based on how well and how long they play. Each point, worth a fraction of a penny, is added up and a donation is made to one or more charities selected by the players.

The money charities will receive comes out of revenue from advertisers that pay to place ads on the site. Seventy percent of the ad revenue is reserved for charities, with the remainder going to pay the costs of operating GamesThatGive, which is owned by a privately held company with the same name.

The site allows people to track how much...

Asking board members to call past donors and thank them for their support is often a way to rekindle the interest of people who have not made a donation in a while said experts who participated in The Chronicle’s latest online discussion.

Among the other suggestions:

• Offer past members of a giving club who donate, say, $1,000 a year a one-time offer to reinstate their membership with a contribution of $700.

• Use anniversaries and other special occasions as a chance to give past donors new options to give or get involved in the group’s mission. For example, one charity started a contest to see who could come up with the best redesign of its logo.

What ideas have worked best for your organization? Share them with us by clicking in the comment box below.

Newsletters done well can raise far more money for charities than direct-mail appeals, according to Tom Ahern, an expert on nonprofit communications and the author of four books, including Raising More Money With Newsletters Than You Ever Thought Possible.

Mr. Ahern spelled out his views—as well as nine “fatal flaws” that nonprofit groups make with their newsletters—in a “Fundraising is Beautiful” podcast produced by Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle, a direct-marketing consulting company that advises charities. Mr. Brooks is also the author of the Donor Power Blog.

Charities should do more “accomplishment reporting” in their newsletters about their work and how it has helped real people, Mr. Ahern said. But instead, they produce brochures in disguise about planned giving, or they feature stories on the personal backgrounds of staff members.

In addition to reporting on...

Economists and politicians are pointing to signs of recovery in the stock market and other economic arenas. But a new survey suggests that Americans’ discretionary income and purchases—as well as their charitable giving—are unlikely to return to pre-recession levels anytime soon.

The survey, conducted quarterly by Finance Finesse, a Manhattan Beach, Calif., company that provides financial education and advice for half a million employees in more than 400 companies nationwide, analyzed employees’ economic interests and concerns through their use of the company’s financial education services.

From April to June of this year, 82 percent of the calls made to the company’s help line were about short-term financial issues such as pressing debt and money-management problems, and 18 percent were about longer-term financial planning. Normally, a Finance Finesse official said, the calls are...

Some alumni make big gifts to their colleges and universities in hopes it will improve their children’s chances of being admitted to those institutions.

Now a new study by two economists has found that alumni are also more likely to give to the institutions they graduated from—and to make larger gifts—if other family members have attended the same institution.

When an alumnus’s parent, spouse, aunt or uncle, or niece or nephew, or in-laws went to the same institution, an alumnus was more likely to give, according to the researchers’ analysis of donations by 12,600 former students at research university whose name the scholars kept secret.

Sixty-four percent of those with relatives who attended the institution made an annual gift, while 51 percent of those without such relatives did. And the average gift of those with relatives who spent time in the institution was higher, $1,114 ...