News/Stats/Studies

Ashton Kutcher, Kanye West and other big-name celebrities don’t do as much good for charity on Twitter, Facebook or other social networks as less-famous people, a new study finds. Actors, comics, singers and bloggers with deep personal ties to causes and potential donors raise far more money for charities.

The report, released this week by the consulting firm Zoetica Media and PayPal, the online donations portal, studied six major online fundraising campaigns.

While many Americans give generously to help people, many others make donations of a different sort: building museums to house their art collections; underwriting new wings in hospitals or halls named for them at their alma maters; using their money and influence to sway public policy and influence political campaigns; or seeking to solve problems in distant lands rather than in their own backyards.

While charitable giving rose slightly over all in 2010, gifts to organizations that address basic human needs fell 6.6 percent, according to Giving USA.

Online fundraising software provider DoJiggy announces the release of a new Fundraising Library for walk-a-thon and other "a-thon" event participants collecting pledges and donations for a cause. The fundraising library was created as a resource to assist organizations and individuals in their fundraising efforts.

DoJiggy’s Fundraising Library includes many helpful fundraising guidelines and resources for team leaders and participants to use throughout their fundraising campaigns.

The Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t set up to become a big fundraising operation, but it has already spontaneously attracted $454,000 in cash from some 8,000 online donors and other supporters to finance the protest in Zuccotti Park.

Many other contributors are providing food, clothes, blankets and other items. So much has been flowing in that organizers have started to send money, goods and financial advice to “Occupy” protesters in other cities.

Convio announced Common Ground Social. Common Ground Social is a complete, fully-integrated social fundraising solution for nonprofits and their supporters. Common Ground Social allows organizations and individuals to leverage the power of peer-to-peer networks by empowering users to create and share personalized fundraising pages through different social networks with the simple click of a button, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Ottawa is conducting a sweeping overhaul of the way it finances charities and non-profit organizations, pledging a new era of accountability in which businesses and citizens shoulder more of the cost of giving.

The government’s lead minister for the changes said financing will come with more strings attached in an effort to ensure that organizations deliver promised social gains.

New England’s nonprofit arts sector is a job-generating, financially robust piece of the economy, despite stereotypes to the contrary, according to a new report released by the New England Foundation for the Arts.

According to this year’s report, New England’s 18,026 arts and culture nonprofits spent nearly $3.7 billion in 2009 and provided jobs for over 53,000 people.

Arts grantmaking in the U.S. ignores big chunks of culture and society, a new report says.

Big organizations get over half the funding awarded each year to arts and cultural groups but represent less than 2 percent of them, while only 10 percent of arts funding explicitly benefits underserved communities, says the report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

Chase announced the launch of the fourth installment of its successful Chase Community Giving program that will determine the allocation of over $3 million in Chase grants to 100 charities selected by Facebook users. Facebook users can vote for their favorite charities through the Chase Community Giving application on Facebook. The Fall 2011 program will award a share of the Chase grants through one round of voting between Nov.r 8 at 12 p.m. EST and Nov. 22 at 11:59 a.m. EST

When Ellen West, director of global communications and public affairs at Google, accompanied a friend to a 2010 fundraising event at Ghetto Film School in New York, she decided to do much more than write a check. At Ms. West’s urging, Google later gave the nonprofit, which teaches New York City teenagers to become filmmakers and storytellers, a $500,000 donation.