News/Stats/Studies

Demand for services is rising fast for charities around the world—faster than donations are expected to increase this year or next, according to a new report released today by Blackbaud, the software company.

Most of the 2,383 charities from 10 countries that participated in the survey told researchers that demand was rising.

Women at every income level give to charity more often than men do—and they tend to donate more money on average than their male counterparts, according to a study released Thursday.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, analyzed charitable-giving data from 8,000 American households.

Just over a third of American donors expect to give less during the final quarter of this year, according to a new survey.

The poll of 603 people who intend to give at least $200 this year found that 55 percent said they would give the same amount as in past years, while only 8 percent of respondents said they plan to give more.

The nonprofit investigative journalism world continues to expand with the announcement on Tuesday that the Center for Public Integrity will absorb the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, a nonprofit journalism arm of The Huffington Post. The move would bring the total headcount at the center to more than 50 employees, making it one of the largest nonprofit investigative newsrooms in the country.

Philanthropic investment in advocacy work yields big returns, a new report says.

Analyzing advocacy work by 20 local nonprofits in four states in the Pacific Northwest supported with a total of $23.2 million in foundation funding from 2007 to 2009, the report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy says those groups helped generated over $5 billion in benefits to poor and marginalized people.

Blackbaud announced the release of a report focused on fundraising trends based on monthly findings from The Blackbaud Index. The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving reports that overall revenue increased by 1.4% for the 3 months ending August 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009. The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving reports that overall revenue increased by 20.4% for the 3 months ending August 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009.

A new ranking of the nation's 400 biggest charities shows donations dropped by 11 percent overall last year as the Great Recession ended - the worst decline in 20 years since the Chronicle of Philanthropy began keeping a tally.

The Philanthropy 400 report shows such familiar names as the United Way and the Salvation Army, both based near Washington, continue to dominate the ranking, despite the 2009 declines. The survey accounts for $68.6 billion in charitable contributions.

Struggling nonprofit organizations in Indiana are turning away from bake sales and chili suppers and turning to gambling as a way to make it through the difficult economic times. An increasing number of nonprofits in the state have applied for and received “charity gaming” licenses, hoping to cash in on the millions of dollars waged every year on bingo games, raffles, pull tabs and even water races.

During the first full year of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, church giving in 2008 as a percentage of congregation members’ take-home pay sank to its lowest point in the past decade, according to a report released Monday. It declined to 2.43 percent, equal to the second-lowest drop since 1968, when the data were first tracked; 1992 had the lowest, with 2.41 percent.

Both fundraising revenue and donor growth remain flat from the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2010, according to the 2010 Target Analytics donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance: 2010 Second Quarter Results report.