As colleges and other nonprofit organizations wade more deeply into social media, institutions need to show their human side and resist the urge to talk at their audiences, a group of social-media experts advised college fund raisers last week.

Employees from Intel, Yahoo!, and LinkedIn shared their tips for success at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s annual conference in San Francisco.

Among their advice: Don’t speak like a monolithic, faceless institution, because donors won’t respond well. Instead, look for ways to show that there are people behind the posts. Find ways to encourage your audience to communicate with each other, providing user-generated content that they can comment on and share with others. With social media, the community has the power, and it’s your job to figure out how to engage community members on their terms.

And don’t wait to try...

The University of Colorado is looking at ways to solicit donations of $5 or so through text messages at football games or other events, the Daily Camera , a Boulder newspaper, reported today.

An announcer could ask fans to pull out their phones during a break in play and text a small donation for scholarships or other purposes. The mobile donations would be paid through the donor’s cellphone bill.

The small donations can add up. On a recent episode of American Idol, the musician Alicia Keys asked fans to text message donations to her charity that helps HIV orphans in Africa, “Keep a Child Alive.” Her request raised $450,000 from 90,000 donors, the newspaper reported.

One student who had a season pass to football games last fall said she and other students would...

Cornell University’s request to one of its top donors, Sanford I. Weill, to pay his $250-million pledge early — and at a reduced rate — may be a tactic more nonprofit organizations could use to raise much-needed cash in this recession.

Brown University has made similar requests, giving donors a discount in exchange for early pledge payments. One foundation, scheduled to complete a $25-million donation to the university in 2012, will instead pay the college $23.9-million this June.

Mr. Weill and his wife pledged $250-million to Weill Cornell Medical College in 2007 as part of a $300-million donation to the university. The bulk of that amount was a bequest, said John D. Rodgers, a spokesman for the...

The University of Chicago announced the completion of its $2-billion-plus campaign Monday, and its vice president for development is crediting the university’s peer-to-peer programs with boosting both student and young alumni giving during the campaign.

“The Chicago Initiative” raised $2.38-billion in nine years. During that time, the percentage of fourth-year students who made gifts rose from below 50 percent at the beginning to the campaign to 77 percent this year. The number of young alumni who donated also went up.

Graduating students this year were asked to donate $20.08 each, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Several years ago, the university made significant investments in staff to support the volunteer fund-raising efforts by students and alumni, said Ronald J. Schiller, vice president of development and alumni relations. The additional staff were available to...

On the eve of her 25th reunion, Carroll Bogert, a member of the Harvard class of 1983, is questioning why she and other alumni should continue to donate to a university with a $35-billion endowment when most of that money is invested rather than spent.

Ms. Bogert, the associate director of Human Rights Watch, makes her case for reexamining giving to weathy universities in an opinion piece in The New York Times.

She and a few hundred fellow alumni have formed a group called Harvard Alumni for Social Action to channel 25th-year reunion giving to poor universities in Africa. In three years, they’ve raised $425,000.

Ms. Bogert says Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard, begged off meeting with the group. “Harvard clearly doesn’t like any effort that might divert a dollar away from its Cambridge coffers,” she writes.

Her argument raises an interesting question: How do universities ...

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, the Hollywood power couple, are lending some celebrity cachet to a fund-raising event this fall that is seeking $500,000 to replace an athletic facility built in 1947 at the University of Charleston, in West Virginia.

Ms. Garner, who grew up in Charleston, says she swam in the university’s pool as a child and remembers meeting kids from around the world there. Ms. Garner did not attend the institution, but is a friend of the son of the alumni couple that part of the new athletic center is to be named after, according to the Charleston Daily Mail.

“I’m begging you to please support this,” Ms. Garner says in a video message.

Celebrity watchers can expect to pay between $250 for a single ticket to $100,000 for a VIP package.

See the video Ms. Garner made to raise money: