Calling all nonprofit geeks. You can now vote for your favorite nonprofit panels that could be featured at the SXSW Interactive Festival next March 11-15 in Austin, Tex.

The social-media industry event has listed a choice of 34 sessions, at the moment—and its calls for votes have been retweeted often on Twitter.

SXSW, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year, began accepting votes on August 11. The public's votes will account for about a third of the final decision. SXSW staff members' votes count 30 percent, and the group's advisory board has a 40-percent say.

You have until Friday, August 27, to vote for your favorites by clicking on the thumbs-up icon.

Using the SXSW Panel Picker, you can also propose new sessions if you're not satisfied with the current selection.

Among some of the panels proposed thus far:

• Crowdsourcing the Corporate/Nonprofit Partnership. Who Wins?
• ...

Have a birthday in September? Get ready to give it up.

You could be among thousands of people, celebrating their September birthdays by asking people for donations instead of gifts — all to benefit Charity: Water's campaign to bring safe drinking water to the Central African Republic's Bayaka Pygmies.

The September campaign, which began Monday, aims to raise $1.7-million to dig and build wells there. So far, it has raised $16,588 for the effort this week alone.

Scott Harrison, president and founder of the four-year-old New York group, says he only needs 1,700 participants for the effort to succeed -- since the average sum of donations per birthday "party" is about $1,000. "It's really the idea of scaling through individuals," he says.

One-hundred percent of the money raised, he says, will go to the water projects. The funds will bring clean water to about 90,000 people in the...

Starbucks customers can soon donate to a nearby school's classroom project with a click of a mouse while waiting for their venti, nonfat, no foam, extra-hot chai tea latte.

With free Wi-Fi now available in nearly all Starbucks stores, the coffee chain is opening its own digital channel this fall to give its customers free access to various paid sites and services. It has already joined with Apple's iTunes, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, and Zagat, among others.

The network, called "My Neighborhood," features one charity: DonorsChoose.org, a Web site that allows public-school and charter-school teachers to solicit donations online for classroom projects.

The community-based channel seeks to feature local content to help people connect with others in their neighborhoods. With the use of geo-tagging, the DonorsChoose.org portal will automatically match Starbucks...

Mobile giving may be the latest fund-raising tool for nonprofits seeking an easy and efficient way to raise money, but it doesn't come without start-up and maintenance costs.

Jason Dick, a college fund raiser, writes on his A Small Change blog about the prices charged by an array of providers. Some require an application process and sign-up fees of $500 to $1,000. Some have monthly fee packages, from $49 to $1,500, and transaction fees for each text message.

1. mGive: $500 sign-up fee; $400 to $1,500 monthly fee; $0.35 plus 3.5 percent per transaction.

2. MobileCause: $350 sign-up fee; $100 to $250 monthly fee; $0.50 per transaction.

3. Give by Cell: waived sign-up fee; $49 monthly fee; $0.48 per transaction.

4. g8wave: $350 sign-up fee; $350 monthly fee; $0 to $0.35 per transaction.

5. iLoop Mobile: $1,000 sign-up fee; $500 monthly fee; no information about the per-transaction fee...

Seen this recently? "Text 'WILDLIFE' to 20222."

You probably have, and others like it, as a growing number of nonprofit organizations, such as the National Wildlife Federation, have gravitated to mobile giving as a way to reach people with an easy way to donate.

Ten days after the Haiti earthquake, text-message donations accounted for more than $30-million, or 14 percent of all donations raised.

Yet the strategy can have its drawbacks. While mobile giving can be an inexpensive way to reach the more than 260 million wireless subscribers around the country, questions remain about its effectiveness and reliability as a long-term fund-raising tool.

Indeed, the National Wildlife Federation, which is running a mobile-giving campaign for animals affected by the Gulf oil spill, has recently pulled its text-to-donate message from its Web site.

The reason? The Reston, Va., conservation group ...

In the next few weeks, major networks and cable channels, such as CNN and NBC, will be running a $2-million television and radio advertising campaign by the American Red Cross – but it won’t mention the name of a major disaster. Instead, it’ll simply ask for your donation.

“In the past, we’ve really initiated our fund-raising during a disaster based upon the anticipated needs of that disaster or series of disasters,” says Laura Howe, an American Red Cross spokeswoman. “This is a little bit different in that we decided to step back and really initiate our fund-raising efforts prior to great disasters.”

The new effort by the Washington organization to raise money preemptively stems from warnings of a busy and severe hurricane season from the National Weather Service. It also anticipates the needs of its disaster-preparedness teams, which respond to about 70,000 disasters each year, and...

Editor's note: The following article has been corrected from the version that was posted on July 28. The previous version misstated the types of compensation the Internal Revenue Service is scrutinizing.

The Internal Revenue Service is now gathering and reviewing information about the compensation of professional fund-raising companies that charities hire to solicit for them, a tax agency official told a gathering of nonprofit development and marketing executives on Tuesday.

The official, Judith Kindell, noted that the newly redesigned informational tax return seeks out information about professional fund-raising companies and their ties to the top executives and board members who run a charity. Charities are now starting to file the new form, she said, and the tax agency's research unit is in the middle of culling trends from the filings, the results of which may or may not be...

How you promote planned gifts is just as important as identifying and cultivating people who want to make a charitable bequest in their wills.

The result can be extraordinary, as the Nature Conservancy, the big environmental group in Arlington, Va., has learned.

Simon Williams, who managed gift-planning strategy and stewardship at the Nature Conservancy before he became a consultant to charities, explained what worked this week at the Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference, held just outside Washington.

His three tips:

*  Develop a content-rich page about planned gifts for your Web site, and promote the link all over your site and printed materials. Also make sure you have an easy-to-remember address in print pieces (www.Webname/bequest) as well as contact information prominently displayed everywhere. Thanks to the Nature Conservancy's planned-giving page, its Web...

The philanthropist Ronald Lauder once said there are three categories of art: "Oh," "Oh my," and "Oh my God." He only collects the latter.

And that's the "OMG" prospect researchers should pay attention to, says Linlin Chen, a research analyst at the University of Chicago, in a presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of Prospect Researchers for Advancement, which is under way in Anaheim, Calif.

When trying to identify potential donors, it couldn't hurt to do a bit of digging about what art they're collecting. It's an important indication of wealth and provides insight to a prospective donor's interest, useful when starting a conversation and engaging donors at the cultivation stage. Such prospects tend to give to research programs, exhibitions, lectures, or institutions that house or show their art collections.

While there aren't easy ways to track and determine the value...

Fund raisers who conduct research on potential donors are seeking to improve their images after The Wall Street Journal published an article raising questions about whether nonprofit groups were invading the privacy of affluent people. Some fear that the article could lead to a government crackdown on what information fund raisers can glean.

At the annual meeting of the Association of Prospect Researchers for Advancement, held this week in Anaheim, Calif., fund raisers expessed concerns about the article, "Is Your Favorite Charity Spying on You?"

Some worry that the article,  which details how some hospitals immediately screen admissions records to find wealthy patients who have checked in, portrayed their profession in a negative light.

"We're not spying on people, for goodness' sakes," says Elizabeth Crabtree, who served as a previous president of the research association. She...