World Vision

One of Australia's best-known welfare organizations, the Salvation Army, has dropped 17 places from last year in the 2014 AMR Charity Reputation Index, a yearly survey which measures the overall reputation of the country's 40 largest charities.

The Salvation Army dropped from No. 10 in 2013 to No. 27 this year.

The results follow allegations of child sex abuse by Salvation Army staff that were the subject of a royal commission inquiry. More than 100 children came forward with reports of physical, sexual and indecent abuse.

(Press release, Nov. 25, 2014) — Blackbaud, a global provider of software and services for the nonprofit, charitable giving and education communities, announced the availability of Blackbaud CRM^™ 4.0. The new release offers customers rich developments in the areas of usability, quality, performance and innovation.

Nonprofits seeking new and generous donors should look to a seemingly unlikely source: young, single women who are not religious, a new study by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy finds.

The Women Give 2014 report confirms this positive relationship between religiosity and giving for most populations studied, but in an important shift from the standard religiosity-giving story, the study finds key exceptions that counter the conventional wisdom about both age and religiosity.

On Oct. 29, an email claiming it was from Christopher Oechsli, president of Atlantic Philanthropies, said the New York foundation was planning to give away $1 million randomly. In reality, the foundation was victim of a phishing attack, a criminal attempt to use an established brand name to lure Internet users into providing personal information like Social Security or bank-account numbers. In the past 18 months, the foundation has dealt with seven such attacks.

Giving to the nation’s biggest and most popular charities grew by nearly 11 percent last year, fueled largely by affluent donors, who are reordering the top ranks of America’s nonprofits, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual rankings of the 400 charities that collect the most from private sources.

The rankings demonstrate a shake-up in the nonprofit world as groups that raise money primarily from the affluent see their donations soar.

As FundRaising Success gears up for the ninth annual Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence, take a look back at the 2012 Direct Mail Campaigns of the Year winners.

If you are a nonprofit fundraising leader, join in on the Leadership Summit.

“Global Fundraising: How the World is Changing the Rules of Philanthropy” by Penelope Cagney and Bernard Ross takes a continent-by-continent overview of philanthropy and fundraising, showcasing techniques and trends, opportunities and obstacles, and features authors with specific knowledge of each market or trend. Although “Global Fundraising” is organized also to highlight several major themes, there are some that resonated quite strongly with my own experience and observations of the international fundraising landscape. These are, in my view, among the most important things that any international fundraiser or nonprofit leader should know …

Jeff Brooks, creative director at multichannel fundraising agency TrueSense Marketing, answers the questions he's most often asked about direct-mail fundraising:

Is the Internet the death knell for direct mail?

Not even close. Direct mail is a long way from death. It's still the most effective fundraising medium (after the church offering basket), and it's many times more effective than email.

Russ Reid, a marketer who determined that nonprofit organizations could benefit from a modern, professional approach to raising funds, died Saturday, Dec. 7, at his home in Sierra Madre, Calif. He was 82 years old.