Nonprofit groups that want to emulate Barack Obama’s success in fund raising through social networks and mobile technologies should start by identifying the networks that are best suited to the organization’s needs and its supporters’ habits, advised experts this week at a session of the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation conference in Washington.

Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn are an effective way to reach large audiences at relatively low cost, said Scott Goodstein, who worked as a social-media strategist in the Obama campaign. But maintaining networks can be labor intensive, and their impact – especially in dollars donated — is often hard to quantify.

Mr. Goodstein urged fund raisers to examine the advantages of each network.

For example, he said, MySpace, which functions as an...

In tough economic times, fund raisers often face pressure from board members and constituents to cut back on costly direct mail and telemarketing efforts to recruit new donors.

But short term gain can mean long term pain for an organization, warned Craig Finstad, assistant vice president of direct-response operations at the American Lung Association in a speech at this week’s Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation conference in Washington.

He pointed to the experiences of one of his charity’s affiliates, which decided to stop spending money on recruitment efforts during the last recession in 2000. Over the following seven years, said Mr. Finstad, the affiliate’s donor pool declined by 70 percent.

Mr. Finstad also cautioned against making big changes to the format or schedule of direct-mail appeals in...

This week, in Slate’s new advice column on philanthropic dilemmas, the mother and daughter team Patty and Sandy Stonesifer tackle the question weigh the merits of supporting friends involved in an endless stream of bike/walk/read-for-a-cause events that seek to raise money for charity.

Before agreeing to make a donation to sponsor a friend’s participation in such an “eventathon,” Patty Stonesifer, former president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (and current chair of the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents) and her daughter suggest that would-be donors ask themselves four questions:

• Would the beneficiary charity figure on your “top 20” list of causes?

• Has the organization made demonstrable progress toward achieving its goals?

• Are the individual’s or...

College and university fund raisers anticipate a slight decline in giving in 2009, according to a biannual fund-raising index released by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

The index, compiled from online surveys of senior fund-raising officials at 242 institutions, found that contributions to higher education were relatively flat for calendar year 2008, with an average growth of 0.3 percent. But fund raisers forecast an average decline of 1.7 percent for the coming year.

John Lippincott, president of the council, has both a glass-half-empty and glass-half-full interpretation of the index’s findings:

On the one hand, he says, even this slight decline represents a significant reversal of the 7-percent average annual growth in donations colleges have achieved over the past 20 years.

“The bad news is that 2009 could be one of ...

While charitable giving by corporations and corporate foundations is expected to drop in 2009, the overall decrease may not be as severe as in past recessions, suggests a report released by LBG Research Institute, a nonprofit research center in Stamford, Conn.

The institute’s online survey of 76 corporations and corporate foundations found that more than half planned to maintain or increase their contributions this year and projects an aggregate decrease in corporate giving in 2009 of 3 to 5 percent – a much smaller drop than the 12 percent decrease reported in 2002 by Giving USA during the previous recession.

“That doesn’t diminish the impact on the nonprofits, though,” says Donna Devaul, the institute’s executive director. “One percentage point is still millions of dollars in fewer contributions to the nation’s charities.” ...

Eight charities, foundations, businesses, and government agencies in the Washington metropolitan area have have formed a “nonprofit 911” coalition to help philanthropic organizations weather the recession.

The self-dubbed “G8” coalition has created a Web site of resources for nonprofit groups and organized a series of workshops and conferences to develop a nonprofit “plan of action” for surviving the troubled economy.

At the coalition’s inaugural meeting on Monday, about 450 representatives of local nonprofit groups, foundations, and corporations gathered to discuss the challenges and opportunities of mergers, share concerns about increased competition for foundation grants, and brainstorm strategies to bring more public attention to and money for the growing demands on social-service groups.

One presentation by the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers suggested...

Arts, environmental, and international charities can take solace in a report by the Foundation Center that suggests that foundations don’t drop their support for such causes even when an economic downturn turns the public’s attention to social-service groups.

The center, a New York research organization, analyzed grants awarded by more than 1,000 foundations from 1999 to 2005 to groups that focus on education, health, arts, international affairs, and human services. The study found that the 2001-2003 recession did not have a disproportionate impact on foundation support for any of those causes, suggesting that, even in downturns, foundations do not make sudden shifts in their grant-making commitments.

That’s not to say that foundations are unresponsive to pressing needs unrelated to their grant-making...

Fund raisers have spent months pushing Congress to extend a tax break that allows older donors to channel money from their individual retirement accounts to charity.

But now that the extension has become law as part of the federal financial bailout measure, fund raisers have less reason to be overjoyed: Since many account holders suffered losses in the stock market, older Americans may be less inclined to give through the retirement accounts.

Still, Timothy Prosser, vice president of institutional trust consulting at TIAA-CREF, told planned-giving specialists gathered at the annual meeting of the National Committee on Planned Giving, in Denver, that charities can still benefit from the tax incentive.

The best prospects, he said, are donors who do not itemize their tax returns or are subject to adjusted gross income tax limitations, as well as donors who want to make large gifts...

Two planned-giving experts looked for the silver lining for fund raisers in the tanking economy in a session last week at the annual conference of the National Committee on Planned Giving, in Denver.

Jeffrey Comfort, senior director of planned giving at Georgetown University, and Cynthia W. Krause, vice president of gift planning at Baylor Health Care System Foundation, said fund raisers who seek bequests and other planned gifts have an opportunity to play a more central role in donors’ discussions with lawyers, money managers, and insurance agents they consult on managing their wealth and estates through the downturn.

One topic of discussion fund raisers may want to raise is the possibility of changes in the estate tax, which is now scheduled to expire in 2010 and return in 2011.

Another is that large stock-market losses have shaken many people’...

Few charities promote insurance gifts, and most of them focus only on the transfer of existing life insurance policies, said E. John McKee, director of gift planning at the University of Maryland at a session of the annual conference in Denver of the National Committee on Planned Giving.

But, he says, this approach rarely makes sense for either the donor or the charity. It assumes that the donor has no heirs, doesn’t take into account the donor’s original motivations in purchasing the policy, and is usually met with resistance from the donor’s insurance agent, who won’t receive commission or benefit from the extra paperwork entailed in the transfer.

Instead, Mr. McKee recommends that charities ask donors to create new insurance policies with the charity as the owner and beneficiary. A fully paid life insurance policy lets the donors make small...