Salvation Army

As a decorated war veteran, the late Colonel James L. Draper Jr.'s final — and perhaps grandest — act of charity came in the form of The Draper Foundation Fund, a $30-million endowment entrusted to The Community Foundation of Northwest Connecticut. The new fund, which represents the largest single gift in the Foundation’s history, will benefit mainly local charitable organizations by making yearly awards to 19 nonprofits named by the Drapers, as well as through annual discretionary grants.

Blackbaud announced that The Salvation Army has successfully transitioned its national Web properties, e-mail marketing, online giving and Online Red Kettle to Blackbaud Internet Solutions.

Started by a Salvation Army captain in San Francisco in 1891, the Red Kettle Campaign has grown into one of the most recognizable and important charitable campaigns in the United States. In recent years, the Red Kettle extended online, and last year, Online Red Kettles raised more than $1.6 million.

Google this week released its annual Zeitgeist report, which tallies the 10 most popular and fastest-rising searches in a wide range of categories. To come up with the fastest-rising terms, it compared searches this year to those in 2010.

“Donate to Japan,” “Red Cross Japan,” and “Japan relief” were the three fastest-rising charitable searches in the United States this year.

If your organization already has an online holiday campaign underway, congratulations and best of luck this season! If not, hopefully this offers some inspiration for planning a winning holiday campaign next year. Remember, the first step is putting a date on the calendar next summer to plan!

Several recent surveys indicate that charities and nonprofits can expect giving to be more bountiful at the end of 2011, particularly compared to the last two years. Moreover, donors seem to be taking into account current economic challenges and government cutbacks when deciding where to give: A recent poll by the Charity Navigator, for instance, found human-service groups, such as food banks and homeless shelters, top the list of where respondents plan to give.

Check out recent posts from Beth Kanter and Inspiring Generosity.

Take a look at Forbes' 13th annual list of the 200 Largest U.S. Charities. They aren’t even 2/100th of 1 precent of the country’s 1.2 million tax-exempt organizations. Yet in their most recent fiscal year the Forbes Charity 200 collectively received $41 billion in gifts — one-seventh of all charitable contributions.

The rankings are based on the amount of private gifts (as opposed to government grants, fee for service or investment revenue) received in the latest fiscal period.

Soon, the holiday sounds of coins clinking into red kettles may disappear, replaced by the silence of a credit card swipe. The Salvation Army has begun shifting into digital donations, as fewer and fewer shoppers carry much change or bills.

This year, the charity is testing the use of Square, a mobile payments startup that allows anyone to accept credit card payments via mobile devices.

America’s big charities expect fundraising to rise in 2011, but the increase won’t come close to making up ground they lost in the downturn.

Nonprofits that made The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Philanthropy 400, the charities that raise the most from private sources, expect a median rise of 4.7 percent — meaning that half expect more and half expect less. That beats last year’s 3.5-percent median gain. Altogether, the charities in the survey raised $70.3-billion last year.

Tithing to mainline Protestant churches as a percentage of income is at its lowest level in at least 41 years, according to a new report, and churches are keeping a greater share of those donations for their own needs.

Parishioners gave about 2.38 percent of their income to their church, according to “The State of Church Giving through 2009,” a new report released by Empty Tomb Inc., a Christian research agency in Champaign, Ill.