Charities shouldn’t worry that they will get poor returns if they send too many mail appeals during election season — at least that’s what past experience shows, according to a study released this week by a direct-marketing company.

Contributions from individuals to political campaigns soared from $220-million in 2000 to more than $570-million in 2004, according to the study by Merkle, a Columbia, Md., company. But that increase was not matched by a similar decline in direct-mail gifts to several environmental, health, relief, or military causes, the company said.

A key reason is that people who give to political campaigns aren’t the same people who charities rely on for support when they send direct-mail solicitations.

People who give in response do charity mail appeals tend to be older than the average donor and have lower incomes and less education. Donors to political...

As fund raisers think about how to handle tough economic times, they should ask themselves how their plans would change “if you knew for a fact that there’d be no recovery until 2010?” says Steve Meyerson, a Washington fund-raising consultant.

The answer, he told a group of charity fund raisers and marketing experts last week, should drive planning now.

Mr. Meyerson also offered other tips for raising money during a recession:

• Communicate to donors how the charity changes people’s lives. “Donors are not that interested in numbers,” he said. Rather, they want to hear that they’re helping to make a real difference in someone’s life.

• Be open. Cautious donors are going to be even more cautious during a recession, Mr. Meyerson said. The only way to deal with that is to share all information with them, including fund-raising ratios, budgets, and other details that charities ...

The number of visitors to the DonorsChoose Web site who made donations increased by 66 percent after the charity redesigned its home page to emphasize the stories of teachers who were seeking support through the charity, an official of the charity told a group of nonprofit marketing officials meeting in Washington this week.

DonorsChoose, which allows donors to give money to buy supplies for public-school teachers, put teachers’ requests in a more prominent position on its site, and made it easier to click through 10,000 requests for aid, says Erica Goldman, vice president of consumer marketing.

Not only did donations from visitors increase as a result, but the charity saw a 62-percent increase in the number of visitors who browsed the teachers’ stories, she says.

The charity has provided more than $20-million worth of supplies to more than 55,000 teachers since it was founded...

Most charities spend less than $100,000 a year on marketing, according to a study released today by the American Marketing Association and Lipman Hearne, a marketing company that serves nonprofit groups. But very few groups know whether their marketing efforts are making a difference, the study found.

The biggest goal of those efforts is to make the public more aware of their organizations, while the second most important goal is to raise money, the study found.

Charities said they thought that the best ways to build awareness of their organizations were through articles and broadcasts about them in the news media and through efforts to win attention from government officials and other leaders who could influence public opinion.

However, many organizations also confessed that they don’t know for sure how effective their marketing is. About a quarter of organizations surveyed...

When the economy slows, the amount of money a company gives to charity may decline with it, said three corporate grant makers speaking at a New York fund-raising conference last week.

But charities can still get plenty of other kinds of help if they ask for it.

Among the types of aid the corporate officials encouraged charities to seek:

• Donations of furniture, computers, printing services, advertising space, or other products or services.

• Help with something the company understands. Marie Cutrone Smith, director of strategic partnerships at ConEdison, a New York power company, noted that her business is willing to offer a lighting consultant for charities, as well as a generator.

• An invitation to a company-sponsored special event, so that charity representatives can meet possible donors.

• A donation of company sports tickets for a silent auction.

...

The economy’s ups and downs should not be a major deterrent to capital campaigns — but concerns about wearing out donors and staff members are critical, fund raisers said at a conference held last week by the Greater New York Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Larry Schafer, vice president of development at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, which last year completed a $1-billion campaign, said such campaigns are so long they encompass both good and bad times on Wall Street. Charities starting a capital campaign now shouldn’t be worried, he said, “because the economy will recover before the campaign ends.”

Right now, Mr. Schafer added, his organization’s hospital and medical school are taking it slowly as they plan a new campaign. “We’re very cautious about the current economy, very conscious of the fact that we’ve had so many big gifts. You have to worry...

Federal privacy regulations have in recent years made it hard for hospital fund raisers to get information about patients they want to solicit.

For example, they can’t find out that a wealthy person was recently treated for heart disease and then send a solicitation for a cardiac-care center.

But Sharp HealthCare Foundation, in San Diego, has found a way to get around the restrictions, often persuading patients to become donors before they e leave the hospital: It encourages patients to donate money to honor a “Guardian Angel,” anyone at the hospital who was particularly helpful during their stay.

Any doctor, nurse, or other employee chosen by a patient receives a “Guardian Angel” pin; donors are given a picture of the worker receiving the pin. In less than three years, the effort has produced nearly 4,000 gifts totaling more than $1-million, says Bill Littlejohn, the foundation’...