By adding the Bed & Bread Club logo to its trucks, the Detroit Salvation Army promotes its monthly giving club.
A simple fundraising idea has given millions of people a place to sleep and a hot meal. The Salvation Army’s Bed & Bread Club has raised more than $100-million nationwide in the last 25 years by persuading people to give monthly.
The charity asks donors to give at least $10 a month, or $120 for the year. More than 19,000 people are now making gifts, and nearly 70 percent of them give additional gifts that exceed the minimum annual requirement.
The Bed & Bread Club is the brainchild of Barbara Antrim Bledsoe, who devised the idea while serving as director of development of a Kansas City, Mo., rescue mission.
Opening all the mail the mission received from donors, Ms. Bledsoe, who is now …
One sign the giving climate is getting better: When we asked fundraisers this spring to name their biggest challenges, not one talked about the economy.
But that doesn’t mean fundraising is easy. Jamie Ersbak, a donor-relations assistant at PATH, the global health charity in Seattle, told us he felt pressure because of “the death of the unrestricted gift” and the number of donors who want to earmark their money for specific purposes.
Kathy Butler, executive director of the Okanagan College Foundation in Kelowna, British Columbia, said she faced the same challenge fundraisers have encountered since the profession began: Forming stronger relationships with donors and convincing them to give more.
See more thoughts from fundraisers in this video, and tell us in the comments below about your biggest challenge in seeking gifts.
Charities that provide food, shelter, and other basic necessities have struggled to keep up with exploding demand for services in the sluggish recovery. But donors have stepped up their giving to cover at least some of the increased needs, a new study suggests.
Still, holding onto those new donors has been a challenge; some of the charities say many donors stopped giving after two years or more.
The number of donors to 13 religious shelters nationwide increased by 12 percent, to 15,555 people, from 2008 to 2010, before declining slightly last year to 15,421, according to an analysis of donations of $10,000 or less by Brewer Direct, a marketing-consulting firm.
The dollar value of donations during that time increased by 30 per cent to more than $1.8-million.
The size of the average gift grew from a low of $152 in 2008 to $175 last year, and the number of gifts made annually…
Rice, beans, and pasta. That’s what Suzanne Pelletier’s family ate Monday, Tuesday, and today—and what they’ll eat tomorrow.
Ms. Pelletier, executive director of the Rainforest Foundation, is participating in “Live Below the Line,” a five-day campaign to call attention to global poverty and raise money for groups fighting it. Participants, including employees of more than a dozen nonprofits, pledge to spend just $1.50 a day, the amount that the world’s poorest people—about 1.4 billion—survive on.
The campaign is organized by the nonprofit Global Poverty Project. Its online fundraising tools enable donors to support charity workers and others who are living on a tiny food budget.
So far, the Rainforest Foundation has received roughly $5,000 through Global Poverty Project’s campaign Web site and by appealing to supporters through e-mails and social media.
Environmental organizations from around the country last week got a chance to seek support for local projects by creating fundraising pages on Ioby, which stands for “in our backyards.”
The nonprofit hopes to become the environmental equivalent of DonorsChoose.org, which raises money for teachers in classrooms across the country.
The organization has already achieved great success in New York, where it has operated for the past three years. Since Ioby got started, it has raised $250,000 for New York grass-roots environmental efforts, with gifts averaging $35. Among the results of those donations: About 250 tons of food waste were composted, 36 farms and gardens were started, and nine bike and recreation days were held.
The organization hopes opening its online platform nationwide will enable groups and individuals to raise a total of $300,000 in a year.
Donors who give through mobile text messages could soon have the options of giving a larger donation and setting up repeat text gifts, say the leaders of two of the organizations that oversee text giving in the U.S. and Canada.
Jim Manis, chief executive of the Mobile Giving Foundation, and Bernard Lord, chairman of the Mobile Giving Foundation Canada, said in an interview that they are working with some cellular service providers to allow $20 donations—double the current $10 limit—and recurring donations, though they gave no timeline on when those features would be available.
Mr. Lord said 75 percent of donors are willing to give $20 or more through text messaging, according to research his group has conducted. Forty-seven percent say they are willing to donate $25 or more through the platform.
Text-message gifts remain popular, the two men say, even though it is quickly be…
NPR’s Car Talk and PBS’s Masterpiece Theater could soon become big fundraising boosters for the nation’s charities.
The Federal Communications Commission is inviting comments on a proposal to allow public radio and television stations to raise money for any nonprofit. Now stations are solely allowed to raise money for their own programs and operations, in part because regulators wanted to ensure broadcasters put all their energy into educational programs.
Stations have been allowed to raise money for big catastrophes, for example after Hurricane Katrina. But they had to go through a special process of getting a waiver from the federal communications agency.
Under the FCC plan, public radio and television stations could spend up to 1 percent of their annual broadcast time—about 88 hours per year—doing on-air fundraising appeals for any charity they want to help.
An online fundraising challenge to spur giving among minorities ended Thursday night after raising $2.2-million in just 10 days. The money will be shared by Associated Black Charities, Hispanics in Philanthropy, and 2o other charities that serve minorities.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation kicked off the Cultures of Giving Donor Challenge on April 17. It offered a dollar-for-dollar match—up to $20,000—for donations made online to each of the 22 charities, all grantees of the foundation.
During the campaign, charities also competed in one-day contests to see which ones could raise the most to improve education, health, or the financial security of the people they serve.
At the end of the competition, Kellogg also offered a $100,000 prize to the charity that raised the most in the 10-day drive. The winner was the American India Foundation, a charity that raised $325,752….
Andrew Watt, president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, says the high turnover rate among people who solicit money at charities is the result of short-term thinking.
Data suggest that fundraisers swap jobs every two years or so, in part because they are lured by better salaries and titles. But Mr. Watt says it takes more time in a job to master the skills that fundraisers need. In an interview with The Chronicle, Mr. Watt urges fundraisers to take the long view on their careers.
A just-hired fundraiser landed several big gifts after taking donors out for drinks. Now he is asking his organization to reimburse him for some hefty bar tabs. But was it ethical for the fundraiser to get his prospects drunk?
Gary Ravetto, a fundraising consultant, received a slew of comments on The Chronicle‘s LinkedIn group after posing this question from a former client. She asked Mr. Ravetto for advice about her new development director whose meetings with donors often take place at a bar.
“His strategy has been to get them drunk and they more easily reach for their checkbooks,” Mr. Ravetto wrote. The client, he added, “wants to know if this approach is acceptable or should she stop it. There have been no complaints thus far.”
Judging from the online comments prompted by the post, many fundraisers believe that mixing alcohol and fundraising is an unethical ploy, though some…
Prospecting follows news and trends about fundraising at nonprofits. You’ll find a mix of advice and techniques that have worked for other charitable organizations, as well as updates on new studies and forecasts that will help you do a better job seeking private money.
Holly Hall, who has covered fundraising for more than two decades at The Chronicle, edits the blog. She also writes many of the items, as does reporter Raymund Flandez, who specializes in fundraising innovations, and other Chronicle staff members.
Keep up with Holly Hall on Twitter at @HallHolly and with Raymund Flandez at @Raymundf23.
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