Faith Based/Religion/Churches
October 14, 2011
Tithing to mainline Protestant churches as a percentage of income is at its lowest level in at least 41 years, according to a new report, and churches are keeping a greater share of those donations for their own needs.
Parishioners gave about 2.38 percent of their income to their church, according to “The State of Church Giving through 2009,” a new report released by Empty Tomb Inc., a Christian research agency in Champaign, Ill.
October 11, 2011
Calling it a major “investment” in its future, the Golda Och Academy announced a $17.2 million bequest from the estate of the late philanthropist Eric F. Ross.
Ross, who died in September 2010 at the age of 91, was a major supporter of the Conservative day school. Its upper school campus in West Orange, N.J. is named in his honor in recognition of a donation he made that led to the opening of the campus in 1991.
September 26, 2011
Dwindling enrollment and other challenges have decimated urban Catholic schools nationwide, but a high-profile initiative to raise $100 million in tuition assistance may allow thousands of children to continue attending schools in the Los Angeles Archdiocese and save those schools from extinction.
The initiative, headed by former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, will ask supporters to make provisions in their trusts or wills for the archdiocese's Catholic Education Foundation, which already awards thousands of grants annually to needy students.
August 26, 2011
The Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles (The Foundation) announced it has awarded a total of $1.2 million in Cutting Edge Grants to seven local nonprofit organizations whose programs seek to address social issues, Jewish education for special needs students and Jewish continuity.
The grant recipients are Moishe House, Beit T’Shuvah, Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Builders of Jewish Education of Greater Los Angeles, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Israeli Leadership Council and Academy for Jewish Religion, California.
June 24, 2011
About 80 percent of Jews age 18 to 35 have engaged in volunteer work during the past year, but by and large their volunteerism has been infrequent and not related to their faith, according to a new study.
The study, commissioned by Repair the World, which works to promote volunteerism among Jews, surveyed roughly 1,000 young Jews last fall and is believed to be the first in-depth look at volunteerism within a faith group, according to Jon Rosenberg, Repair the World’s CEO. Many of the findings apply to any religious group, he says.
June 6, 2011
Los Angeles-based Brewer Direct has inked agency of record agreements to manage direct response fundraising programs for the Kansas City Rescue Mission and Gospel Rescue Ministries of Washington D.C. The additions bring the agency’s roster of Rescue Mission clients to 18 nationwide.
Work for the Kansas City Rescue Mission will focus on developing a new, fully integrated donor acquisition strategy. For Gospel Rescue Ministries, Brewer Direct will design, implement and manage end-to-end direct response fundraising campaigns across multiple channels.
June 2, 2011
As several media outlets consider the move towards nonprofit journalism, Religion News Service recently took the plunge with a $3.5 million three-year grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. RNS, the only nonreligious service covering religion and ethics exclusively, became a nonprofit under Religion News Foundation, a new parent company over Religion Newswriters Association.
June 1, 2011
Different donor segments respond in different ways to different approaches. Successful fundraisers know that nuances in messaging can mean the difference between a gift and a gaffe.
June 1, 2011
Of course, fundraisers can't risk making promises they can't keep. But if you take the religion out of it … do you think this whole Rapture thing has anything to teach fundraisers about getting out their messages and engaging supporters?
May 27, 2011
Michel Roy has been elected as the new general secretary of Caritas, the Catholic Church’s confederation of charitable and development agencies. The 56-year-old Frenchman was voted in by a majority of delegates at the organization’s general assembly in Rome.
Roy has 30 years experience working for Secours Catholique in France. He began by working for the diocesan office in Paris in 1981. He is a father of two children and is an alumnus of the Sorbonne University in Paris, graduating in economics and oriental languages.
