News/Stats/Studies

Charities that have undergone campaigns to raise “philanthropic equity” have, on average, tripled the amount of services they provide, according to a new report by NFF Capital Partners, which advised the nine charities on those campaigns.

The Nonprofit Finance Fund, an organization that helps nonprofit groups nationwide, set up NFF Capital Partners in 2006 to help charities raise philanthropic equity, money that used to build both its capacity to deliver services and the business operations that will make the organization sustainable over the long term.

A recent survey is challenging a commonly held myth by many small to midsize Christian nonprofits. Many think that their boards are the key to their fundraising success, adopting a wishful "If only..." attitude, looking for wealthy individuals to sit on the board and only focus on fundraising. However, new information from a survey conducted by Mission Increase Foundation reveals that board members do not think fundraising is their most important role. And many of the nonprofit staff members agree.

Did you realize that your nonprofit organization is but one of over 1.5 million other nonprofits in the U.S., and that our combined assets exceeded $4.3 trillion dollars in 2007? Did you know that over one quarter of U.S. adults volunteered in 2009? In 2008, volunteers contributed time worth $20 billion in average wages. [As reported by the Urban Institute.]

America’s biggest charities are on a slow-moving path to recovery from fund-raising losses in 2009, according to a new Chronicle survey of giving in April, May, and June.

Cash giving to big charities in the second three months of 2010 grew by a median of 3.1 percent compared with 2009.

That means that half the charities in the survey achieved a bigger increase than 3.1 percent and half a smaller gain or a decline compared with 2009. Giving in the second quarter of 2009 fell by a median of nearly 18 percent.

A survey conducted by the Forward has found that Jewish and Christian religious institutions appear to raise about the same amount per member, despite the fact that church giving is voluntary and synagogues charge membership dues.

But the level of participation is quite different: While synagogues require roughly the same amount of dues from each of their members, church giving does not appear to be so evenly distributed.

The World Giving Index, the largest study ever carried out into charitable behaviour across the globe, which ranked the UK the eighth most charitable nation in the world, has found that happier people are more likely to give money to charity than those who are wealthy. The World Giving Index used a Gallup survey on the charitable behaviour of people in 153 countries representing 95% of the worlds population. The survey asked people whether they had given money to charity in the last month and to rank how happy they are with life on a scale of one to

Nonprofit groups added jobs during the recession, according to an analysis of government data from 21 states by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies.

Nonprofit employment in those states grew by an average of 2.5 percent a year from the second quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, the study found. By contrast, for-profit employers in the same 21 states shed jobs by an average of 3.3 percent a year.

Battles between charities and the watchdog groups that help donors decide where to give escalated last week when a major trade association released drafts of two reports by scholars who say the watchdogs may do more harm than good.

The studies, paid for and released by the Direct Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Federation at a meeting here, charge that the watchdog groups use evaluation systems that are confusing and simplistic.

Baby Boomers and older donors are the most valuable givers and mainly give through the mail to nonprofits, which should focus their fundraising spending on the donors and giving channels that generate the biggest return now and perform the best, a new study says.

And donors prefer to give to charities that spend money on good management and fundraising, says Heart of the Donor: Insights into Donor Motivation and Behavior for the 21^st Century.

This week's insider news includes new software for Sept. 11 Day of Service and social media, plus new hires.