E-Philanthropy

These five common online fundraising themes prevailed at the ArtezInterAction Conference.

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 website that will enable donors to compare how charities spend their money is to be launched this week.

More than 200,000 UK-registered charities will be listed on aliveandgiving.com, which will give donors access to charities' financial information and spending.

People will be able to search for charities on the site according to sector or location. A list of relevant charities will then appear with information next to each about how much of the donation will be spent on administration and on front-line services.

There are still several common mistakes fundraisers make in their online communications, says Thomas Gensemer, managing partner at online technology provider Blue State Digital. Here, he shares those common online fundraising mistakes and provides ways fundraisers can overcome them.

Two designated charities are already benefiting from the publicity generated by the mock rallies announced by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on their shows in recent weeks. The comedians have told supporters to donate money to help restore the park where the rallies will be held and to buy school supplies for classrooms in their community. So far, they’ve raised a total of $364,000.

There's much debate underway regarding the effectiveness of traditional fundraising sources. We're hearing a lot about social media, the importance of websites, emerging technologies and the transitioning of direct mail to electronic media.

Start your donor relationships off right with prompt, polite thank-you notes, and start lighting the fire for your end-of-year appeals today.

Canadians are more likely than Americans to make donations online, according to preliminary findings from a new survey of 7,950 American and 7,050 Canadian donors.

Sixty-three percent of the American donors said they had already given online or planned to do so this year, while 72 percent of Canadians did.

Year-end online fundraising doesn't just happen in December. Here are nine practical steps fundraisers can take now to raise more money online in December.

The demographic sands are shifting — there will be an increasing number of older donors with more disposable income as the baby boomer generation matures, and those donors are going to have to use technology to support their nonprofit organizations of choice. With the likely long-term demise of checks as a method of payment, nonprofits are going to need to make sure their technology is incredibly easy to use so anyone can utilize it.