Fund raisers in higher education, especially those who work for institutions with large, well-established development departments, have some of the most desirable positions in the field. One benefit is the steady stream of potential donors with each year's graduating class; fund raisers at many other types of charities usually don't have such a built-in source of new donors.

And increasingly those careers are a powerful draw for another reason: They can lead to a job offer to become a college president, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fewer than 4 percent of college presidents step into the job from a senior fund-raising executive position, according to a 2006 study The Chronicle cites. But the number of fund raisers who become college chiefs seems to be growing. And seasoned fund raisers, especially if they have advanced degrees, may increasingly be tapped when a wave ...

The Foundation for New Jersey Public Broadcasting is bracing for rough times ahead. The New Jersey Network, which operates five television channels and a radio station, just lost more than half of its state appropriation for the fiscal year that begins today.

This year, the network will receive $1.9-million from state coffers, down from $3.9-million last year. That means that the foundation, the network's fund-raising arm with a staff of 20, will have to work harder to raise money from private sources. The foundation raised about $10-million toward the network's $25.4-million budget last year.

The task could become even harder. The state's governor, Chris Christie, has appointed a committee to consider whether to end all state support for the network.

The New Jersey foundation's woes are playing out all across the country, as charities that depend on government funds confront record...

Perhaps no tool is better for learning about a foundation's priorities and spending capacity as its informational tax return, the 990-PF, says Pamela Grow, a fund-raising consultant, in her blog about grant writing.

She advises grant seekers about six parts of the 990 that often reveal nuggets of useful information. For example, Part 1 of the form summarizes revenue and expenses, and it's worth checking to see if big contributions have been made during the year in question, she writes. If so, a founder or trustee may have recently died, and the foundation may be on the verge of giving away more money.

Ms. Grow also advises grant seekers to scrutinize Part IX-A, the summary of direct charitable activities to get a sense of how large the foundation's average grant is.

"If the foundation you're researching tends to give many grants in the $2,500 to $10,000 range (as opposed to a few...

Las Vegas has one of the worst job markets in the nation. More than 10 percent of the city residents have been out of work for 17 straight months, and the unemployment rate was 14.1 percent in May. But that didn't stop the YMCA of Southern Nevada from achieving record fund-raising returns last year.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, the Y's president, Mike Lubbe, describes how the charity was able to serve more people and raise more money in 2009 by making what some might call a counterintuitive move: At a time when most organizations are struggling for every penny, the Y lowered its membership dues by 15 percent.

That has attracted more members and lowered the number of people who drop out. As a result, the organization didn't lose money by reducing dues.

"We're retaining them because it's a little more affordable," Mr. Lubbe told the Sun. "That's our business model. Charge...

Observations that donors are not giving much money to provide relief for efforts to clean up the gulf oil spill appear to be borne out by the meager amount given in response to a telethon aired on CNN this week.

The two-hour star-studded broadcast featuring talk-show host Larry King on Monday night generated $1.8-million. By contrast, a similar broadcast with Mr. King raised $10-million following the Haiti earthquake in January.

Fund-raising experts and charity leaders have speculated that the sluggish pace of donations is because Americans expect BP, as the company responsible for the spill, to pay for the damage it has caused.

Donations in response to this week's telethon are going to the National Wildlife Federation, Nature Conservancy, and United Way Worldwide. CNN says it selected those groups as a way to highlight three areas of need: saving animals, restoring natural habitats, ...

British nonprofit groups are hoping that a new video-sharing Web site called See the Difference, which went live this week, will meets it goal to raise $700-million for charity by 2015.

Using the site, donors can watch videos and contribute to projects depicted on film by more than 100 registered charities in the UK. In return, they receive feedback from the organization by e-mail. The site encourages donors to send the videos to their friends and to post them on blogs and social-networking sites.

See the Difference has drawn an impressive array of corporate backers, including Microsoft, McCann Erickson, and other big companies.

But some observers doubt that See the Difference will spur much giving. One of them is Mark Phillips, the founder of Bluefrog, a London fund-raising consulting company. "I've had a good look around the site and watched a fair number of videos," Mr. Phillips...

Jewish organizations are stuck in antiquated fund-raising practices dating from the 1970s, and that's why they are losing donors and contributions, according to Robert P. Aronson, president of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, in New York.

Mr. Aronson offers four lessons in a new essay picked up by The Fundermentalist, a blog about Jewish philanthropy. The essay is one of a dozen pieces about Jewish fund raising to appear in the spring issue of Contact, a quarterly journal published by the Steinhardt Foundation.

Recalling his early days as a fund raiser 35 years ago, Mr. Aronson describes how Israel was the trigger for giving, and fund raisers believed that the cause was so important that they were entitled to their donors' money -- an attitude he says continues to this day. Which brings us to Lesson No. 1: "Just because they have the money doesn't mean you're going to get it,...

The Georgia Supreme Court this week heard arguments in a lawsuit to determine whether a suicide-prevention and counseling charity in Athens owes property tax—all because of the way the organization raises money.

The lawsuit is among several nationwide in which state and local governments, often strapped by shortfalls, are  challenging charities' exemption from property and other taxes or attempting to impose new fees.

In the Georgia case, county tax assessors argued that the group, Nici's Space, should be required to pay property tax because it  raises money by renting its premises for birthday parties and other private events. The group, the tax officials said, does not qualify for charity status because the fund-raising events are not open to the community at large.

The charity's lawyer, Jim Warnes, countered that the charity does not owe property taxes under a 2007 statute that...

When Giving USA, the annual tally of American donations, is released this week, it will probably get more attention than usual because so many fund raisers and other charity officials are wondering just how much the economic downturn jolted donors.

Compiled by researchers at Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, Giving USA will provide a snapshot of how much money charities received in 2009 from corporations, foundations, and  individuals.

We'd like to know how your organization fared in 2009 and what the outlook is for 2010. Have you been able to raise as much as before the recession? What techniques are working and what ones have been less successful? Tell us whether you're having more success with individuals, foundations, or corporations or anything else that will help give Chronicle readers a better sense of the state of fund raising.

Declining property values have started to affect how much American charities receive from the estates of donors who died in recent years.

Now Third Sector reports that the same thing is happening in Britain. British charities collectively lost the equivalent of $83.5-million last year in bequest or "legacy" gifts, according to a study by the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy. The researchers attributed the decline to the drop in property and asset values in the United Kingdom. In a typical year, British charities receive about $2.8-billion in estate gifts.

Because donors' estates often take a year or two to settle, the drop in such gifts has lagged behind declines in other gifts such as cash and donated stock.

In both countries, the slump in the real-estate market is hampering the ability of executors to sell houses and other property. Even when they do sell, less money is...