Fourteen percent of donors who gave at least $20 to charity in the previous year said that they had received a direct-mail appeal and decided to go online to give,  a new study has found. By comparison, only 6 percent of donors said an e-mail appeal had propelled them to give online.

The study of more than 500 donors, conducted by the research firm Campbell Rinker, found that 37 percent of donors who give online said that when they receive a direct-mail appeal from a charity, they use that organization's Web site to make their contribution—rather than sending a check.

The study also found that young people were more likely to give online in response to direct mail than older donors: Half of the donors in Generation X (age 27 to 47) and Generation Y (age 18 to 26) said they gave online in response to direct-mail appeals.  Just 26 percent of baby boomers (aged 47 to 65), and 14...

Canadians are more likely than Americans to make donations online, according to preliminary findings from a new survey of 7,950 American and 7,050 Canadian donors.

Sixty-three percent of the American donors said they had already given online or planned to do so this year, while 72 percent of Canadians did.

The survey by Cygnus Applied Research, a Chicago research and consulting company, found that 75 percent of the Canadian donors said they would make at least one online transaction in 2010, a figure that increased to 90 percent among Canadian donors under age 35.

"Online giving has surpassed the tipping point," at least in Canada, said Penelope Burk, the president of Cygnus Applied Research. 

Ms. Burk and her colleagues speculated that one reason Canadians appear to be more comfortable donating online is that more of them have high-speed Internet access, which makes giving online...

Tonight at a big gala on Ellis Island, the American Civil Liberties Union will celebrate raising $407-million in a five-year campaign that far exceeded the advocacy group's original goal of $250-million.

The ACLU initially planned to raise $100-million in cash and $150-million in bequests and other planned gifts by the time the organization turned 90 this year. But, despite the bad economy, the charity has ended up with more than $150-million in cash and over $250-million in planned-gift pledges, thanks to a series of challenge gifts and other big donations.

ACLU officials said that the new money will go to affiliates in states where resources have been scarce and to build the capabilities of its national headquarters.

Among some of the notable gifts:

* The financier Robert W. Wilson made a cash donation to match a portion of each new bequest or other planned-giving pledge, up to $10...

As football season starts, so too does a new fund-raising and promotion campaign by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, in Memphis, and the Fox television network.

Employees of Fox Sports selected St. Jude as the beneficiary of one of its employer's charitable giving programs.

All of the sport station's broadcasts of National Football League games this year will feature public-service announcements and on-air mentions about St. Jude's efforts to fight childhood cancer and other diseases—all the way through the Super Bowl. St. Jude patients will also be featured in pre- and post-game coverage.

Spots about the hospital will also air on other Fox outlets, including National Geographic and Fox News. All told, Fox expects that St. Jude will be mentioned on its airwaves about 1,300 times throughout the season.

Nine Fox Sports on-air personalities, including Pam Oliver (above),...

Donations received by 91 of the nation's largest nonprofit organizations grew by a median of 3.1 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period in 2009, a new Chronicle survey has found.

The quarterly survey, which examined cash contributions received in April, May, and June, found that while the charities reported an increase over 2009, median donations have actually declined by 1 percent since the first quarter of this year.

Still, the 3.1-percent growth represents progress since the worst part of the recession in the second quarter of last year, when cash donations plummeted by a median 18 percent.

Let us know how your organization is faring. Are you seeing signs of progress?

Some fund raisers use the long-running Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon—which just completed its 45th Labor Day broadcast—as a barometer of the fund-raising environment they face as the crucial fund-raising season is about to start.

This year's telethon shows the forecast was tepid at best.

When the telethon officially ended yesterday, the broadcast had raised $58.9-million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, or about $1.5-million less than the $60.5-million it generated last year. The televised event's record was $65-million in 2008.

The telethon, which raises about a third of the contributions received by the Muscular Dystrophy Association in any given year, reaches 40 million viewers and is broadcast on 170 television stations. For that reason, said Jim Brown, the charity's vice president for public relations, "it is a very good benchmark for how Americans might respond to an appeal."

Who said kids can't raise big bucks?

In the last five years, students of the Austin Tennis Academy, which annually trains more than 100 tennis players aged 5 to 18, has raised more than $350,000 for A Glimmer of Hope, a Texas charity that provides clean water and other necessities to needy people in Ethiopia.

The young tennis players are well on their way to reaching a goal of raising $1-million over the next few years by undertaking an annual campaign from June through November. The players participate in the campaign, called "Playing for Glimmer," by asking their parents and friends to give a certain amount for every tennis match they play or by asking for a one-time donation.

The tennis academy's relationship with A Glimmer of Hope began after the charity's founder gave a presentation about its work in Ethiopia to students at the academy.

Josh Hagar, one of the players, decided ...

As technology advances and the number of wealthy people around the world grows, more and more charities are seeking donations globally. But World Vision, the international relief organization, is going local in a new concentrated fund-raising campaign to recruit new donors in a single city.

The campaign, called Count on Spokane, in the midsize Washington city of 450,000, started last week and will run for six weeks. The charity will use direct mail, presentations to church congregations, paid radio and television spots, bus ads, celebrity appearances, and more to seek out new donors.

"By going in with all guns blazing and combining these strategies, we think it will generate a bigger response," said Steve Quant, World Vision's director of media acquisition. But, he said, "it is a big test. A lot of these channels have never worked together before." If it is successful, he added, the ...

Most fund raisers don't have to worry about a war getting in the way of a capital campaign. But for the American University of Beirut, that is one of the many challenges it has faced in its fund raising.

One reason the institution was able to avoid too much damage to the big campaign is that a dedicated group of faculty members decided to start a "mini campaign," separate from the university's more-ambitious capital drive, to help people hurt or displaced by the war. It raised $1-million in just a month.

To learn more about the institution grappled with a crisis, listen to this audio interview from The Chronicle of Higher Education.