Last month we mentioned GivingUSA’s annual assessment of individual giving which showed that donations from individuals had dropped 5.7% overall in 2008. Things were even worse on the corporate side.
The Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s 2008 assessment of corporate gving (PDF) reports that corporate giving was down nearly 8% overall ($30.78 million compared to $33.19 [...]

Tags: Fundraising

The good news from the annual GivingUSA report (PDF) on U.S. philanthropy is that total giving for 2008 was estimated to have exceeded $300 billion for the second year in a row, for a total of $307.65 billion. But, unfortunately, most of the news was bad. This was a two percent drop in [...]

Tags: Fundraising

Care2’s Allyson Kapin just published an analysis of Convio’s online fundraising study (which I mentioned earlier this week). She interviewed me, so of course I think the article is good. But in particular, check out the advice from online marketing consultant Katy O’Neal about how nonprofits should focus their marketing and engagement efforts. [...]

Tags: Fundraising, Online Fundraising

Convio has released a new online fundraising benchmark report that is based on data from 600 of Convio’s nonprofit clients from January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008.
The study reports:

Positive year-over-year growth in all of the key areas of online success. Compared to 2007, results for online fundraising were up 14 [...]

Tags: Fundraising, Online Fundraising

Jay Frost of ContactReporter.com (and formerly with WealthID.com) is conducting a survey on the impact of the economic crisis on charitable giving.  He describes it as follows:

This short survey is designed to gather information about the impact of the economic crisis on charitable giving. In particular, we hope to learn if there are significant differences [...]

Tags: Fundraising

Idealware just published an article by Keith Heller called Do You Need New Donor Management Software?

Keith urges nonprofits to look before they leap into new software, cautioning that “new software may not make anything better — in fact, it could make things worse.” He then addresses what new software could do for your organization, [...]

Tags: Databases, Donor Databases, Fundraising

Trend or coincidence? Twice in the past week I’ve come across online fundraising campaigns in which the fundraiser promises to do something embarrassing when the goal is met.

Last week, Holly Ross, NTEN’s Executive Director, posted a video appeal for her attempt to raise $10,000 for scholarships to the upcoming Nonprofit Technology Conference. If she meets [...]

Tags: Fundraising, Online Fundraising, Social Media, Web 2.0

Following up on Elliot’s blog post, How Important Is Mobile Giving?, and the subsequent TechSoup discussion, I’m posting an analysis conducted by Sarah Grosvenor, the Assistant Director of Annual Giving at Willamette University, on the potential for mobile fundraising at the University. Sarah granted me permission to share her findings with the world. The information [...]

Tags: Fundraising, Mobile Communications

Margaret King, President of the InfoRich Group, has published an article on how prospect research yielded $1 million in foundation funding for one of her clients. She discusses the strategy behind the research, the tools she used, how the list was narrowed to a group of top prospects, and the general approach to cultivating [...]

Tags: Foundations, Fundraising, Prospect Research

The Association of Fundraising Professionals has posted A Survival Kit for Fundraising in a Bad Economy, which includes links to dozens of articles.
Titles include "Direct Response: Ways to Cut Costs, Not Returns," "Face the Economy With Sharpened Focus, Solid Strategy," "Succeed at Fundraising Despite a Recession," "Fundraising in a Recession," "Recession-Proof Your Fundraising," "Fundraising in [...]

Tags: Fundraising