The days following the devastating earthquake in Haiti have been a turning point for cell-phone fund raising.

In the first 36 hours after the disaster, donors contributed more than $7-million via text messages, according to the Mobile Giving Foundation.

Within two days, text-message gifts to the American Red Cross exceeded $5-million. By contrast, the organization raised just $200,000 by cell phone during the 2008 hurricane season.

“This is the coming of age for mobile giving as a disaster fund-raising tool,” said Mark Rovner, president of Sea Change Strategies, a fund-raising consulting company in Takoma Park, Md. “There are people who will only give when there is a disaster, so finding ways to make it easy and convenient are extremely important.”

When asked whether some of the instantaneous $10 gifts are replacing what might have been larger online gifts at the organization’s...

Men and women who support charities during their lifetimes are about equally likely to provide for charities in their wills, according to new research by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, in Indianapolis.

Among donors who have a will, 17.2 percent of men and 15.1 percent of women included a bequest in that document, according to the center’s study.

The report also found no difference between single men and single women in their likelihood of planning bequests. Single individuals of either gender were more likely than either married or widowed supporters of charities to arrange charitable bequests, said the study. About one in four single donors who have wills have made provision for planned giving.

However, among people who attend often attend religious services, men were more likely to report having provided for charities in their wills, according to researchers....

As fund raisers search for signs of the economic recovery, one bright spot already on the horizon, says a veteran fund raiser, is the potential for gifts of appreciated securities from donors who may have benefited from the decrease in stock prices over the last year.

“Last fall when everyone was selling, somebody was buying,” said Robert F. Sharpe, a Memphis fund-raising consultant, at the annual meeting of the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning in Washington. And by early next year, he explained, those buyers will have newly appreciated stock ripe for charitable contributions.

You can read more about Mr. Sharpe’s observations in our conference notebook.

More than six out of 10 Americans in a new study said they were not familiar with the term planned giving, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning. in Washington.

That lack of understanding is why the partnership is using a new name — it was formerly the National Committee for Planned Giving. See more updates from the meeting in our conference notebook.

More charities are actively promoting bequests and other planned gifts now than 10 years ago and they are making their pitch to even younger donors, according to research presented today at the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning’s annual meeting.

Read more about this study’s findings in our conference notebook.

Is fund raising “the black sheep of the nonprofit sector”?

Dan Pallotta thinks so.

Mr. Pallotta is the founder of a company that raised money for charities, and an advocate for business approaches to solving social problems.

Writing on his Free The Nonprofits blog, Mr. Pallotta argues that fund raisers are treated as “second-class citizens to the program staff,” something he says is ridiculous given that “without fund raising there are no programs.”

He suggests making fund raising “a program domain in and of itself — every bit as important as the medical research, social services, advocacy, and everything else it makes possible.” All spending on fund raising, under Mr. Pallotta’s plan, would be considered a program expense, not an administration cost.

That would allow for more experimentation in fund raising, a profession that is now stymied by concerns about administrative...

Charities are trying to restore donor confidence in Muslim organizations and encourage giving this Ramadan, which began on Friday.

Muslim Advocates, a nonprofit legal and civic-education group in San Francisco, announced today that three charities had completed an accreditation program it started last year with the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.

The charities are Islamic Networks Group, a San Francisco charity that promotes cross-cultural understanding; UMMA Community Clinic, started by American-Muslim doctors in Los Angeles; and Inner-City Muslim Action Network, which fights poverty on the South Side of Chicago.

Some donors have been hesitant to give to Muslim charities because of intensified government scrutiny and increased regulations following the 2001 terrorist attacks. A recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that some Muslim donors gave ...

Now that July 4 is over, Betsy Stone, a charity consultant in Sacramento, is already thinking about Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the onslaught of charity gift guides that come out that time of year.

She is “thinking out loud” on her blog The Philanthrophile about whether the holiday philanthropy guides some newspapers and magazines publish are worthwhile.

Her conclusion, after hearing from some nonprofit groups that have used them: not really.

“It could even hurt them by diminishing the amount of dollars available for direct contributions from potential corporate sponsors,” she writes.

Charities have to pay to appear in these guides, and usually they seek corporate underwriters to cover the costs (in exchange for the company’s name appearing in the ad). In Sacramento, at least, Ms. Stone says, companies take the money spent on underwriting out of their philanthropic budgets, ...

It is a widely held belief among donors that “good” charities are those that direct a high percentage of donations directly to their cause. Nonprofit groups that commit more money to their missions and less to fund-raising and operating expenses are seen as efficient and more trustworthy.

“But what if the accounting some nonprofits are employing to give us a number that will earn our trust is not to be trusted?” writes Dan Pallotta on Free the Nonprofits, a blog on Harvard Business Publishing’s Web site. “What if the ultimate measure of trustworthiness is highly vulnerable to deceit?”

Mr. Pallotta notes that some charities “game” that system and appear “holier” than others by labeling all or some fund-raising expenses as part of the cause. While he favors a “broad definition of the cause,” charities should tell the public “loud and clear” what that definition is.

“I have a...

A potential new application for Apple’s iPhone may give charities a new way to reach possible donors.

The app, Givabit, would send a short description of a charity to an iPhone and offer the phone’s user an opportunity to give to the group. The program, which would be free to download, would provide a new charity profile every day.

Laurel Angelica, content editor for the Web site TakePart, writes that Givabit could revolutionize fund raising.

“The goal is to make people familiar and comfortable with philanthropy by making it easy and convenient, without a burdensome cost,” she writes. “With millions of people using the iPhone, if you get enough people on the Givabit bandwagon, all of the sudden, small dollars have a huge impact.”

TakePart, which is part of Participant Media, a media company founded by Jeff Skoll, features articles and discussions about charitable causes.