American Red Cross

Nineteen nonprofits, including the American Red Cross, Livestrong Foundation and UNICEF, now have the ability to receive donations through their Facebook pages with a donation feature that Facebook made available to them last week.

When supporters land on a charity’s Facebook page, they can select the “donate now” button (on the top right of the page), enter the amount they want to give and their payment information, and share the fact that they gave through their news feeds. Facebook says 100 percent of the online contributions will go directly to charity.

You should not eschew small-gift fundraising, even if the lion’s share of your funding comes from major donors. So let’s take a mini-break from thinking about major-gift fundraising (of which I’m a huge proponent). Whenever you can get a donor in the door, one with affinity for your cause, you should. Let’s look at 10 ways to succeed with small gift fundraising: …

Russ Reid, a marketer who determined that nonprofit organizations could benefit from a modern, professional approach to raising funds, died Saturday, Dec. 7, at his home in Sierra Madre, Calif. He was 82 years old.

All signs are pointing to a robust Giving Tuesday haul as nonprofits report big increases in their fundraising. Online donations processed by Blackbaud on Giving Tuesday rose 90 percent, to $19.2 million from some $10 million during last year’s event. The average gift online yesterday was $142, up from $102 on Giving Tuesday 2012, Blackbaud says.

Network for Good, which processes online donations, said it handled $1.8 million in gifts on Tuesday, compared with $1 million on Giving Tuesday 2012.

Donor-advised funds have attracted an ever-larger chunk of American donations since the 1990s. Though legally public charities, they are more like holding tanks that let would-be philanthropists deposit money, collect the tax benefits up front and then decide later which causes they actually want to give to. Legally, there’s no limit to how long the money can sit there.

Two nonprofit organizations share how they secured the proper matches to run three extremely successful fundraising campaigns. Toronto-based Kids Help Phone secured a corporate partner to match gifts to its holiday campaign. And the Coast Guard Foundation struck matches with two campaigns — matching donors' desire to help during an emergency for a Coast Guard tragedy and incorporating a matching gift in its annual Memorial Day campaign.

FundRaising Success is blessed and proud to work with some of the brightest stars in the fundraising firmament. Meet our latest 2014 Editorial Advisory Board members.

As your nonprofit prepares for a holiday fundraising campaign, hundreds of other charities are doing the same.

After enduring some criticism over its performance during Superstorm Sandy, the American Red Cross has agreed to make changes in the way it solicits donations after major disasters to avoid potential confusion over how that aid money is likely to be spent. The relief organization agreed to modify the language it uses on its website in a way intended to give donors more information about whether their gifts will be used to assist victims of a particular catastrophe or for Red Cross operations in general.

At bbcon, two fundraising professionals shared the key attributes of engaging e-mail and ways to optimize e-mail communications in their session, "Email in a Social Media/Mobile Device World."