As local governments face increasingly tight budgets, many nonprofit groups are scrambling to keep money they receive from government agencies.

In California, charities in Santa Clara last year managed to stave off a major budget cut in the money that the county provides for services to the needy.

The Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits formed an unusual alliance with a local union that represents about 1,000 county workers who could have lost their jobs if the government cut spending. They argued to county supervisors that the cuts would cause “major disruption to our community systems of care that will force clients to more expensive inpatient, emergency, and other institutional care.”

Over nine months, the charities and workers attended more than 50 strategy sessions, public hearings, and one-on-one meetings with policy makers, county department heads, and elected officials, a...

Do training programs for entry- and mid-level fund raisers help charities increase contributions in the long run? Or, given the amount of turnover among fund raisers nationwide, do participants learn new skills that disappear from the organization when they move on to the next job in a year or 18 months?

For the last several years, the Lilly Endowment, in Indianapolis, has made a series of grants to help teach fund-raising skills to large numbers of staff members at big charities around the country. The latest such grant—and the largest—is $6-million recently awarded to United Way of America.

Over three years, the grant will enable United Way to train 1,000 fund raisers each year from among its 1,300 local affiliates. In an arrangement with Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy, which will provide the training, United Way fund raisers will receive instruction on seeking big...

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis, does better than most charities when it comes to seeking bequests.

The hospital’s annual bequest income has grown from $37-million in 1998 to more than $100-million today.

David L. McKee, St. Jude’s chief operating officer, says one reason it succeeds is that it closely coordinates direct-mail appeals with efforts to seek bequests and other planned gifts.

For example, the hospital sends the names of all direct-mail donors age 65 and older to its planned-giving specialists so they can educate them about planned gifts, following up any interest with visits and other communications. “The average estate gift doubles if we visit them,” says Mr. McKee.

Those donors also get an acknowledgment from the hospital, no matter how small the gift, unlike other donors who get no such acknowledgment if they give $5 or less, says Mr. McKee....

Charities rarely can guarantee donors will be satisfied, but some groups are taking extra pains to ensure contributors are happy.

Among them: DonorsChoose, a group that lets donors pay for education supplies and other needs listed by schoolteachers on a Web site.

In exchange for contributions to a teacher of their choice, donors are promised a statement from the teacher describing the difference made by the gift, thank-you letters from students, and photographs of students putting a donor’s money to work.

But, about 2 percent of donors never get those materials. So now those donors get an e-mail message offering them the chance to pick another teacher to support, and DonorsChoose covers the cost. To pay for the extra donations, DonorsChoose is using a $30,000 grant it received from a donor who wanted to help the charity back up its promises.

Donors who receive the...

A new series of free videos featuring senior fund raisers who talk about “their joys, frustrations, and how they overcome their challenges” on the job will be available starting on Monday, April 21

The videos, Movie Mondays for Development Directors, are being offered by 501 Videos and its founder, Christopher Davenport, who creates documentary films and videos, including footage that charities use to raise money.

The new videos, lasting about five minutes apiece, will be offered weekly for five weeks. Fund raisers can sign up on the Movie Mondays Web site to receive them by e-mail

Mr. Davenport says that the video series cost him $100,000, which he has raised from donors “who have an interest in seeing nonprofits do well.”

(For more on the ways fund raisers solve problems, see Working It Out, a recent Chronicle article that examined common challenges.)

The talk show host Oprah Winfrey has the Big Give, a televised competition to promote philanthropy by seeing which contestants can make the best gifts. Other celebrities like the rock star Bono are raising money and awareness to help end poverty and hunger in Africa.

But celebrity pitches don’t persuade many Americans to support new causes, according to results of a Harris Poll released today. Only 15 percent of respondents in the survey said they had supported a cause or requested more information about it because of something they heard a celebrity say or do.

What’s more, 51 percent said that celebrities make little or no “positive difference” on the charitable issues they promote.

But celebrity philanthropy fueled by television, film, and other media shows no sign of slowing down.

NBC is planning a one-hour drama next year about a “renegade” billionaire philanthropist who...

Nearly $4-billion could soon start flowing to charity as Americans begin to receive the tax-rebate checks the federal government hopes will stimulate the economy.

That estimate comes after the Associated Press conducted a poll to ask people what they would do with their checks — and 4 percent of Americans said they would direct some of their rebate money to charity.

Barlow Mann, a Memphis planned-giving consultant, says that the people most likely to turn over their tax rebate to charity are middle-class people who previously donated gifts in the $100, $250, or $500 range. Donors of much larger sums, he says, probably makes more than the average taxpayer and is therefore not eligible for the rebate.

Mr. Mann says he’s advising his nonprofit clients, especially those with large numbers of donors who give modest amounts, to promote rebate donations through mailings, advertisements...

In Denver, Rebecca Epstein is looking for a new job as a development director and — with 20 years of experience — she’s now a finalist for the top fund-raising job at two organizations. One potential employer has made a salary offer, but “frankly, it feels a little low,” Ms. Epstein wrote to colleagues in an online discussion list maintained by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Her question for fellow fund raisers: How much should she ask for?

“Here is my rule of thumb,” came the response sent by Terry Scott Boykie, director of development at the Washington Math Science Technology Public Charter School, in the District of Columbia .“Forget about salary ranges for a particular [geographic] area. Accept nothing less than a 30-percent increase and that includes vacation. Lower than that and you’ll never move to the next plateau.”

“Shame on all of us if we think asking ...

The stock market’s slide has begun to affect a fast-growing type of giving.

Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund — which raises more than all but three other charities in the country according to The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 400 rankings — says contributions dipped by 8 percent in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the first quarter of 2007.

Fidelity, like numerous other financial institutions and community foundations, offers donor-advised funds — a sort of charity checking account that many donors set up with stock gifts.

And that’s why it’s not surprising, says Sarah Libbey, interim president of Fidelity’s Gift Fund, that her organization’s decline in giving mirrors the first-quarter stock-market declines of 7.6 percent on the Dow Jones and 9.9 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500.

The Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving says giving dropped 10 percent, to $77-million, in the...

The hazards of a fund-raising job are often not discussed in public, but in private, fund raisers say they face many obstacles. For example, many fund raisers have been sexually harassed by donors and others, says Collette Murray, an Indio, Calif., executive recruiter who has previously headed fund-raising offices at nonprofit groups.

“I had staff creating relationships; they were not good relationships but exploitative,” she recalls. “I had older men hitting on young females and older women donors cultivating younger men. You see someone spending way more time with a particular donor, and that is a clue.”

Another problem is a jealous spouse. Ms. Murray says that during her fund-raising career, she worked for two different men whose wives got upset about the time she spent with their husbands on fund-raising visits and solicitations. One of the wives invited herself along on fund-...