The story of a never-married secretary who left $7-million in her will to her alma mater is still making the rounds—in fact, the ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer noted the gift in a recent piece called "Secret Donor."

Grace Groner had quietly amassed a fortune with a single investment: Back in 1935, she bought three shares of stock, each worth $60, in Abbott Laboratories where she worked; it grew to $7-million.

But no one knew that Ms. Groner, who died at 100 years of age, was a multimillionaire until her extraordinary gift to Lake Forest College was announced. She lived frugally in a tiny cottage that was worth about $150,000.

Still, there were clues that could have tipped off a savvy fund raiser, even though development officers and the president of Lake Forest had no idea the gift was in the works, writes blogger and direct-marketing expert Roger Craver in The Agitator.

For one thing,...

Seeking a new way to appeal to donors in a bad economy, the Museum of Science, in Boston, has a running start at raising at least $80,000 a year.

The museum approached organizers of the Boston Marathon, applying for one of six openings that every year is reserved for new charities that are allowed to use the September race to raise money. Out of 120 competing charities, the museum  was approved for the marathon, and can now enter 15 runners a year for the next three years.

By advertising those openings for 2010, the museum easily filled the 15 spots after receiving 50 to 60 applications from people who want to do the marathon and, in the process, help raise money. This year, proceeds will be used to buy a new van for the museum's traveling programs, which annually bring science exhibits and educational lessons to 81,000 New Englanders.

Each museum racer must raise at least $3,250...

Globalization, the rising importance of small businesses, and the growing need for new revenue are some of the trends that will force fund raisers at nonprofit hospitals and health-care organizations to change their approaches, a new report says.

The report, commissioned by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, examines how high-profile trends are affecting the jobs of fund raisers, the needs and motivations of donors, and the communities in which hospitals and other health groups operate.

Globalization alone, for example, is making itself felt througout health care in numerous ways. Among them:

• The  percentage of Americans who were born outside the United States is bigger than it has been since 1920 and those individuals are more likely than people born in the United States  to hold a college degree.
• American hospitals are increasingly participating in cross-border partners...

Like many other nonprofit groups, colleges have been challenged in recent years by declining numbers of donors--in their case, alumni who make annual gifts.

While the annual Voluntary Support of Education survey found the lowest-ever rate of alumni giving in the history of the survey last year, at least five institutions are bucking the trend, according to a new article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Among the successes:

• The president of the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass., holds breakfast meetings for young alumni. That has helped push alumni participation above 50 percent, far above the 10-percent national average.

• Carlton College, in Northfield, Minn., received gifts from more than half of it alumni last year. Its annual fund director attributes the high participation rate to student volunteers who thank donors in different ways, including athletic and...

In her second annual experiment to track national charities' reactions to unsolicited donations, communications consultant Kivi Leroux Miller once again finds "a pitiful response."

Writing in her Nonprofit Communications Blog, Ms. Miller describes how she gave 10 big charities $20 each online in December through Capital One Giving Site, an online donations portal, and agreed to share her e-mail and mailing addresses with the recipient organizations.

After confirming that the donations were transmitted to those charities on January 15, Ms. Miller settled in to await thank-you notes and acknowledgments from the 10 charities. Ms. Miller says that she does not count the automated e-mail response she receives from the online payment processor. "I'm looking for communication from the charity directly," she writes.

But by February 18, more than a month later, she had heard from only three ...

Fund raisers who solicit large gifts need to become knowledgeable about the charitable aspects of a law that allows people to covert their regular individual retirement accounts into Roth IRAs this year, says Robert F. Sharpe, a Memphis planned-giving consultant.

Regular IRAs grow tax free until withdrawals are made. But Roth IRAs are created with after-tax assets: That means people can use Roth IRAs to set aside money to tap into tax free at a later date--or pass along those assets tax free to heirs, an attractive option for many wealthy individuals.

Starting this year, people whose incomes were too high to qualify for Roth IRAs in the past can now take advantage of them. But anyone shifting money from a traditional to a Roth IRA must pay taxes on the money. This year alone, they have the option of spreading the taxes between 2011 and 2012.

Charitable giving can help offset some of...

Are donors willing to give their cellphone numbers to charity?

Allyson Kapin, a marketing consultant, notes in Frogloop  that the recent success by the American Red Cross—which raised more than $31-million through cellphone text messages after the Haitian earthquake—has many charities eager to try mobile fund raising. To do that effectively, however, charities needs to gather the cellphone numbers of potential supporters.

But doing so might be hard. Charities that require people to provide a cellphone number—when  making a donation, signing a petition, or joining an event—could put off many potential supporters, she acknowledges.

Still, with a growing number of Americans giving up their land lines in favor of mobile phones, Ms. Kapin notes, organizations may find that people are increasingly willing to share their cell numbers.

During the presidential election,  organizations like...

DonorsChoose.org, the online education charity, found a way to spur a flurry of donations that will pay for 700 classroom projects posted on its Web site by schoolteachers.

DonorsChoose picked 700 classroom projects that involved American history or civics. and used a portion of a $1-million grant it had received from the Pershing Square Foundation to pay for all but $100 or less of the cost of each project. Then it offered individuals the chance make a project possible by making the last payment on it.

Calling the offer a "Presidents' Day Sale worth caring about," DonorsChoose started to promote its   "philanthropic sale" on Thursday, planning to offer it throughout the coming weekend. But, within 24 hours, donors had paid for all of the projects.

Charles Best, founder of DonorsChoose, says that he and his colleagues came up with the approach after the Pershing Square Foundation...

The economy's sluggish growth suggests that American households will give 3.9 percent less to charity in 2010,  according to a new projection by two researchers at Boston College's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. But if the economy heats up, donations could return to pre-recession levels in 2010.

John J. Havens and Paul G. Schervish, the Boston College scholars, based their projections on a new way they devised to give up-to-the-minute estimates of how much donations are likely to grow or fall, rather than waiting months and years for researchers to estimate how much Americans contributed to good causes.

Currently, charitable donations are tracked by Giving USA, the annual tally of American philanthropy, but those data are released six months after the year has ended. "Charities naturally would like to know estimates of charitable giving for the most recent quarter and to receive...

While most charities have struggled to raise money during the recession, a few charities have beat the odds, achieving increases of 10 percent or more despite--or perhaps because--of the bad economy.

Even as many social-service organizations have grappled with soaring demand and declining donations in recent months, Feeding America, the national network of food banks, has thrived. In the final quarter of last year, for example, Feeding America raised $26.5-million, up 51.4 percent from the same period in 2008.

Leaders of the anti-hunger group say the increase is in large part because donors recognize the extreme rise in demand for basic services like food and shelter as the economic crisis has taken its toll.

Those donors include corporations interested in polishng their image in the wake of federal bailouts and controversy over high pay at financial companies. Bank of America last...