News/Stats/Studies

The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council and Epsilon today released the Q4 2010 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results, which show an increase in conversion rates of 16.1 percent over Q4 2009.  The 2.9 percent conversion rate is the strongest over a two-year period.

Members of foundation boards are predominantly white, male and over age 50, and they do not receive compensation for their board work, a new survey says.

Eighty-five percent of board members at over 500 foundations responding to a survey by the Council on Foundations are white, 62 percent are male, and 74 percent are over age 50, with 19 percent age 40 to 49.

At family foundations, 16 percent of board members are under age 40, representing the largest share of board members that age among all foundations, says the survey.

1% for the Planet said its environmental donations grew by 40%. The organization is a network of companies in 43 countries who pledge to give at least 1% of their revenue to environmental causes. In the last three years, more than one company a day has joined the 1% network..

The Board of Directors of Operation Smile today voted to discontinue the proposed merger with Smile Train. The Board of Directors of Smile Train also has voted to discontinue the proposed merger, confirming an earlier report in the New York Times.

Grant making by the country’s richest foundations is expected to tick up only slightly in 2011, according to a new Chronicle survey based on data from 187 funds.

The modest increase would come after two successive years of gains in foundation assets following the 2008 stock-market plunge that gobbled up a third of the foundation world’s wealth.

However, foundation endowments remain roughly 17 percent lower than before the recession, according to data from 65 grant makers for which The Chronicle has five years of data.

Blackbaud today announced the release of two groundbreaking research studies at the Run Walk Ride 2011 Fundraising Conference at the Intercontinental Buckhead Hotel in Atlanta. The first studyrevealed the results of their first annual “Peer-to-Peer Event Fundraising Consumer Survey.” 

The second study reported on the findings of Blackbaud’s first annual “donorCentrics Event Benchmarking Summary,” a study based on in-depth analysis of fundraising performance data from six top nonprofit organizations from 2007 through 2009. 

A growing number of Canadians are worried about fraudulent charities that intend to pocket hard-earned donation dollars.

New survey findings show that 53 percent say they are less likely to give to charities because of concerns about charity fraud, while 65 percent report an increased concern over the possibility of fraud—particularly in the wake of a natural disaster.

A new survey from the NonProfit Times and Infogroup/Nonprofit found that donors, when asked which type of organization actually needs money, see education as a top priority.

However, the most recent data available from the Giving USA Foundation found that more than one-third of total donations made by individuals between 1992 and 2009 went to religious groups, including $100.9 billion in 2009, compared to $40 billion for education organizations.

As job hunts became tough after the crisis, evidence suggested that more young people considered public service. In 2009, 16 percent more young college graduates worked for the federal government than in the previous year and 11 percent more for nonprofit groups, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the American Community Survey of the United States Census Bureau. A smaller Labor Department survey showed that the share of educated young people in these jobs continued to rise last year.

In the course of doing their jobs, the ethical challenge fundraisers most commonly face involves donors' intentions about how their contributions are to be used, a new survey says.

About 30 percent of respondents to a recent poll say the ethical dilemma they are most likely to face is "use of donated funds," says the Association of Fundraising Professionals, which conducted an online poll on its website during January.

About 16 percent of the 569 respondents say privacy and confidentiality are the top ethical challenge, while 15 percent cite "donor control over gifts."