Emergency Appeals

The RSPCA is to tweet animal emergencies all day, with followers getting the chance to view the wide range of calls the charity receives.

The RSPCA's cruelty line received more than 1.25m phone calls last year and, on average, the charity responds to about 1,000 incidents a day.

RSPCA inspector Tony Woodley set up the Twitter account feed as he wanted to publicise the work of the RSPCA's 288 inspectors, 119 animal welfare officers and 74 animal collection officers.

We'd like to introduce SOFII to those of our readers who don't know about it and share some of the fundraising efforts that have made it into the site's Best of the Best Showcase.

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.

With many charities facing grave financial conditions because of the recession, Metro United Way is making $475,000 available to area nonprofits.

Traditionally, United Way doesn’t distribute money collected in its annual giving campaign until after July 1.

But Joe Tolan, United Way president and chief executive officer, said that many local nonprofits have been forced to decrease staff, close programs, cut staff training, and limit the number of people served because of funding cuts.

When the Haiti earthquake hit back in January, the outcry and response were swift and plentiful. In this new era of the iPhone and other mobile devices, the biggest buzz in the fundraising sector was generated from the mobile-giving explosion following the disaster. But the biggest takeaway for fundraisers — all of them, not just disaster-relief organizations — is that donors have certain, higher expectations these days, and your organization must meet them.

"Shame on you, America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and 
mentally ill without treatment — yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations."