Can nonprofit groups really raise money on the social-networking site Twitter?

The author and social-media consultant Beth Kanter has studied the history of fund-raising efforts on the site and answers with an unequivocal yes.

Writing on Beth’s Blog, Ms. Kanter points to several examples of successful fund raising-efforts on Twitter.

In one case, a heart surgeon in India raised more than $5,000 for his charity, the Heart Kids.

The popular blog Mashable raised more than $3,500 using Twiter for Charity:Water, an organization that builds wells in Ethiopia.

Ms. Kanter writes that charities need to make sure they build appropriate networks before they begin appealing for dollars.

“I can’t stress the importance of community building or rather network building,” Ms. Kanter writes. “You don’t go into using a Twitter strategy without having built up a little social capital.”

For ...

Amid a tough economic climate, finding ways to maintain fund raising without adding costs is a challenge, but plenty of low-cost approaches can boost donations, writes a fund raising consultant on the Future Leaders In Philanthropy blog.

Among the tips from Holly Lillis, of Changing our World:

• Engage in simple Web-site maintenance, to ensure the organization shows up high on search engine searches

• Host volunteer drives to offer ways for supporters to give at time when they might not have much extra cash.

• Craft simple, brief, e-mail messages to take the place of more expensive traditional mailings

• Have a “friend raising” event to recruit new donors. Ask board members or other supporters to invite their friends and colleagues to a party to learn about the charity, for example.

Has your organization adopted any of these tactics already? What approaches are ...

It turns out that jokes about the economic crisis and the increased financial needs of students just aren’t funny when they appear in a fund-raising letter from your alma mater.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert may make snarking about current events look easy, but Framingham State College learned a painful lesson in misguided humor when it attempted to make light of the tanking economy and credit crunch in a recent appeal for donations from 6,000 younger alumni who had not previously given to the college.

“With the recent economic downturn and loan crisis, it has become even more important for Framingham State College to receive your support. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” the letter reads. It goes on to say: “No matter the amount, every gift counts. Blah, blah, blah,...

For 37 years, Opportunity International, in Oak Brook, Ill., has provided small loans mostly to poor women overseas to help improve their lives and the lives of others in their towns and cities. Now the charity is seeking more donations from women in the United States to help reach its goal of moving 100 million people out of poverty by 2015.

To connect more female donors to its cause, the group created a new position, vice president for women’s philanthropy. The occupant of the job is Ruth-Anne Renaud, who has 20 years of corporate marketing experience.

Despite the tough economic climate, Ms. Renaud told The Chronicle in an interview that she is optimistic about her mandate.

“We have a cause that is particularly relevant — it’s built around the concept of women helping women,” she says. “Here is an opportunity for women in the developed world to transform the lives of women and...

Worries that the current economic crisis will severely curtail grant making among American foundations are overblown, according to a special report issued today by the Foundation Center, in New York.

The report cites the center’s prior research showing that foundation giving in inflation-adjusted dollars did not decline after recessions in the 1980s or the 1990s, and that modest grant-making dips following the economic downturn in 2001 did not nearly match the drop in the value of foundation assets.

“There’s a lot of gloom-and-doom talk about how big a hit grant making will take because of the current economic conditions,” says the Foundation Center’s Steven Lawrence, who wrote the report. “ We wanted to show that from what we know, based on experience, is that the impact will likely be much more moderate than many of the predictions.”

The center issued the report, Mr. Lawrence...

Are donors as compassionate as they were in past?

Kevin Baker, a columnist for Canada’s Financial Post, writes that the growth of marketing arrangements that connect the sale of corporate goods with charities has prompted many would-be donors to expect something in return for their benevolence.

“Charity has a new best friend: self-satisfaction,” he writes. “Consumers today like giving to others when giving makes them feel good about getting for themselves.”

Instead of appealing to donors’ good intentions, many charities today are teaming up with for-profit companies to raise money. Mr. Baker points to a recent campaign by Canada’s Third World Eye Care Society, which received a free pair of reading glasses for every pair customers bought from the for-profit company Suntech Optics, as evidence of the trend.

Such arrangements, of course, are not new. But they are becoming more...

Join us this today at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time for an online discussion about operating costs — and how charities can find money to pay for them.

Paul Shoemaker, head of Social Venture Partners Seattle, will offer perspectives on what his organization has learned as it provides money and advice to help charities improve their management.

Our online discussions are open to everyone, not just Chronicle subscribers. You may start posing your questions now.

Fund raising is filled with myths about what works — and why.

David Valinsky and Melanie Boyd, two fund-raising consultants, write in their book Raising Money Through Bequests that they don’t believe in giving up on people who have not given for a while.

They acknowledge that a lot of fund raisers believe if someone gave money to your organization in the past, but hasn’t done so in a number of years, you shouldn’t bother keeping them on your mailing list.

Mr. Valinsky and Ms. Boyd warn fund raisers not to be so hasty. “Our colleague Wayne tells a cautionary tale,” they write. “He was surprised when one of these lapsed donors, a woman who upon her husband’s death felt she couldn’t continue her annual support, left the organization with a significant bequest. In her mind, she wasn’t a lapsed donor. She was simply delaying her gift.”

Do you have a story of a lapsed donor who was ...

Following is the final installment from a notebook kept by Holly Hall, a features editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy, who has been studying at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

Day 16: Charities Become Irrelevant

Web sites like Kiva.org and ModestNeeds.org, which enable donors to give directly to needy people and then get updates about their progress, are part of a trend that is making nonprofit organizations increasingly irrelevant, says Jon Duschinsky, a fund-raising consultant in Paris.

Mr. Duschinsky, who is teaching a class on global philanthropy here, noted that Kiva and the growing number of Web sites like it, enable donors to bypass nonprofit groups altogether.

“For the first time ever, the balance of power is shifting,” he says. “Nonprofit organizations no longer identify problems and beneficiaries. With Kiva, you don’t get telemarketing calls and e-mails....

Following is the second installment from a notebook kept by Holly Hall, a features editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy, who has been studying at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

Day Seven: How to Conduct Research on Donors

Most nonprofit organizations don’t conduct research on their donors very often, but there’s an easy and cost-effective way for charities to gather useful data on them every year, Simone Joyaux, a fund-raising consultant, explains to our class.

Ms. Joyaux suggests that fund raisers gather donors regularly to learn more about their preferences and what they like and dislike about the organization.

Such informal focus groups, she says, not only provide fund raisers with valuable information to guide future solicitation efforts. They also build a closer relationship between the donor and the organization.

For example, a college could invite parents to...