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Author Archives: Nicole Wallace
September 25, 2012, 9:03 am
To Raise More Money, Talk About Impact, New Guide Advises
To raise more money, nonprofits need to tell donors how the organizations’ work is making a difference, counsels a new fundraising guide.
“Donors say that information about a nonprofit’s approach, expected results, effectiveness, and past performance—in other words, impact information—is most important to them but hardest to find,” write the co-authors of More Money for More Good.
The manual is based on a study that found donors would be willing to shift $15-billion in giving to high-performing nonprofits if they had easy access to good information about the organizations’ work. The study, conducted by GuideStar, the nonprofit online publisher of data on charities, and Hope Consulting, was based on surveys of more than 5,000 donors, 875 donor advisers, and 725 foundation officials.
Giving donors information about the effect of a group’s work doesn’t mean…
March 7, 2012, 4:20 pm
Walkathons and Athletic Events Raise More Money in 2011
In 2011, Light the Night Walks brought in $50-million for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. (Photo courtesy of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society)
Last year, the top 30 fundraising races, walks, and other athletic events took in $1.69- billion, an increase of almost 2.5 percent over 2010, according to the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council’s sixth annual study.
It was the second year in a row of overall growth among the top athletic fundraising events. In 2010 cumulative contributions were up 1.6 percent over the previous year. By contrast, total donations to the top 30 events in 2009 were down 8.5 percent compared with 2008.
Multi-Day Events Stumble
In 2011, donations rose for 23 of the top 30 events. Of the seven events that raised less money in 2011, the steepest declines were for multi-day…
January 12, 2012, 11:21 am
Haiti Text Gifts Spur More Disaster Contributions
Donors who made text-message gifts to aid survivors of the devastating earthquake in Haiti two years ago have continued to turn to their cellphones to give after other disasters, according to a new study.
Four in 10 of those donors texted a contribution to help people in Japan following last year’s earthquake and tsunami, according to a survey of 863 people who made a text-message gift after the earthquake in Haiti. More than a quarter of donors to Haiti reported that they gave via cellphone after the BP oil spill in 2010, and nearly 20 percent said they made a text-message gift to help victims of last year’s tornadoes in the South.
The survey was conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, together with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard and the mGive Foundation, with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Roughly…
December 15, 2011, 8:23 am
Giving to Catholic Parishes Drops
Catholic parishes—and the charities that rely on them—have been feeling the pinch of the financial downturn.
Contributions declined at more than half of parishes from 2008 through 2010, according to a new study. Roughly 20 percent of parishes said giving remained flat during that time, while 13 percent reported that contributions decreased at first and then rebounded. About 10 percent of parishes said donations rose.
The Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova University analyzed the data 390 Catholic parishes provided as part of the Faith Communities Today survey, which was conducted by the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership.
Parishes’ budgets for charitable contributions were among the first victims of the downturn, according to the survey. About 55 percent of parishes reported that they reduced the amount of money they contributed to mission…
May 6, 2011, 3:52 pm
Are Robots the Future of Fund Raising?
A girl makes a coin donation during one of DON-8r's test runs in Dundee. Photograph by Neil Anderson
The future of fund raising isn’t a topic that usually conjures up visions of Star Wars. But that might be changing with two academic efforts testing robot solicitors on three continents.
Tim Pryde, a 21-year-old product-design student at the University of Dundee, in Scotland, built DON-8r – pronounced “donator” – a small robot that travels through public spaces, relying on coin donations for charity into a slot on its back to keep moving.
Mr. Pryde, who built the project as his final-year project, says he got the idea by watching the often-negative attitudes people had toward street fund raisers who make face-to-face solicitations in busy pedestrian areas.
“You often see people walking …
March 24, 2011, 10:03 am
Creativity Counts When Presenting Facts and Figures
Online fund raising grew by 14 percent last year, according a report we wrote about a few days ago. But how best to convey the significance of that—or to show that behind the increase was a leap in giving to international-aid groups prompted the Haiti earthquake?
The people who produced the study—M+R Strategic Services and the Nonprofit Technology Network—took a creative approach to help readers see the key findings more clearly. The report illustrates how organizations can present important facts in a compelling way.
What do you think of the approach? What are some other examples of creative presentations of nonprofit data? We’d love to see how other groups are sharing their facts and figures. Point us to your favorite works.
March 22, 2011, 1:43 pm
Teaching Donors How to Give Via Cellphone
Washington
Text-message giving is relatively new, and donors are still getting the hang of it. In the wake of the disaster in Japan, the Salvation Army is trying to ensure that more of them complete the transaction.
To make a donation via cellphone, donors send a specific keyword, such as “Japan” or “tsunami,” to a five-digit short code. Then they receive a text message asking them to confirm the gift.
If a donor doesn’t respond to the confirmation message, the charity does not receive the donation–something that happens fairly often, Jason Wood, a technology official at the Salvation Army, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, in Washington last week.
During the Alexandria, Va., organization’s year-end fund-raising drive, text-message gifts totaled $26,000, but he said that number would have been $12,000 higher if everyone who started the donation…
March 15, 2011, 9:54 am
Online Giving a Bright Spot in 2010
Internet contributions were one of the few bright spots in fund raising last year. Now two big fund-raising software companies have analyzed their clients’ 2010 online-giving data.
Blackbaud: Online gifts to the 1,812 charities that Blackbaud tracks in its Index of Online Giving totaled more than $495-million in 2010, an increase of more than 34 percent, according to a report released by the Charleston, S.C., company.
Nonprofit groups with annual budgets of more than $10-million saw the biggest gains, with an increase of more than 55 percent. Online contributions increased by 22 percent at organizations with budgets of less than $1-million and by almost 16 percent at groups with annual budgets of $1-million to $10-million.
Online giving represented more than 7 percent of overall fund raising, based on the 1,438 charities for which the company had both online and total…
March 14, 2011, 1:14 pm
Giving for Japan Disaster Totals at Least $24-Million
Early donation totals are starting to come in from charities that are raising money to aid victims of the earthquake and tsunamis in Japan.
Among them:
- The American Red Cross had raised approximately $19-million as of Monday afternoon Eastern time. Text-message contributions accounted for $1.6-million of that total.
- Catholic Relief Services had raised $450,000 as of Monday afternoon.
- Give2Asia raised $33,500 for relief efforts over the weekend.
- International Medical Corps so far has raised $11,830 via text message.
- International Rescue Committee so far has received $25,000, which it will give to Japanese charities that are providing immediate relief. The organization has an emergency team on standby ready to assist if needed.
- Mercy Corps had received $600,000 as of Monday afternoon.
- The Salvation Army had received more than $980,000 by Monday afternoon. Of that total, …
February 2, 2011, 6:58 pm
Text Donors Want to Give More
One of the big questions charities have about text-message giving is whether the $5 and $10 gifts donors make using their cellphones come at the expense of larger gifts those same people would have made online or in the mail.
In a new survey, more than 8 out of 10 people who made charitable donations via text message said they would consider making larger contributions using another method.
The report, however, is based on a relatively small group of donors.
In December, CCS, the fund-raising consulting company that conducted the research, sent a text message about the survey to more than 23,500 donors who had made a contribution using their cellphone and opted to receive follow-up messages from the charity to which they donated; 253 of those donors completed the survey.
The percentage of cellphone donors who choose to receive additional information varies, but is generally…
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