News/Stats/Studies

A high-ranking official resigned Tuesday from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity after a dispute over whether the group should give funding to Planned Parenthood, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Karen Handel, the charity’s vice president for public policy, told Komen officials that she supported the move to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. She said the discussion started before she arrived at the organization and was approved at the highest levels of the charity.

The majority (63 percent) of private equity fund managers — regardless of fund size — are receiving new commitments from Limited Partners (LPs), according to the third annual PErspective private equity study by BDO USA, one of the nation’s leading accounting and consulting organizations. That’s up from 56 percent of fund managers who indicated they were receiving new commitments from LPs in 2010 and only 40 percent who said so in 2009.

Alabama Gives Day, which ended at midnight Thursday, raised $743,985 for nonprofit agencies around the state. The event encouraged people to make online donations to an array of nonprofit agencies. More than 1,000 organizations signed up.

It certainly helped Care Assistance for the Aging and Homebound of Madison County, which assists about 3,800 elderly and homebound clients. The organization hoped to raise $5,000 and ended with $5,370. Some of the Huntsville nonprofits that raised funds included Crisis Services of North Alabama $4,020, Merrimack Academy of Performing Arts $2,540 and HudsonAlpha Institute $1,095.

What will a new generation of Facebook millionaires do with their wealth? It’s a good bet that many will splurge on a fancy new car, purchase a new home or perhaps even plan a trip to space. But it's also likely that they’ll be giving some of it away to charity.

Experts expect charitable causes and nonprofits to be among the side beneficiaries of the minting of 1,000 or more new millionaires from Facebook’s impending initial stock offering.

The main house at the Kennedy family's famous waterfront compound on Cape Cod in Massachusetts has been donated for use as an education center aimed at teaching leadership and inspiring public service, the institute receiving the donation said on Monday.

The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate said the house where the Kennedy family retreated from the public glare for decades was donated at the request of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his widow, Victoria.

Chaordix, a crowdsourced market intelligence provider, has been selected to provide program expertise and collaboration technology to support community engagement in the Grand Challenges for Development program offered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Implemented with support from Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), the program is part of an ongoing effort by USAID and partners to catalyse a broad range of actors to make significant and measurable progress against specific development challenges that people face around the world.

Charitable giving will grow slightly this year but charities still will need to work to raise more money. That was the prediction of Michael Walden, an economist at N.C. State University who spoke to an audience of 175 people on Jan. 30 at the fourth-annual Philanthropy Forecast sponsored by the Triangle chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Giving follows the economy, and the economy is starting to pick up after a deep plunge during the recession, Walden said.

U.S. presidential campaigns and political action committees, or PACs, filed financial reports on Tuesday that showed how much they had raised and spent as of Dec. 31.

The filings to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) also offered a snapshot of who donated how much to the "Super PACs," which operate independently from campaigns and can raise unlimited amounts from individuals, corporations and unions.

College and university endowments made gains in the fiscal year that ended in June, but many are still struggling to make up ground they lost in 2008 and 2009, according to a report released Tuesday. Data gathered from 823 U.S. colleges and universities show that the institutions' endowments returned an average of 19.2 percent for the 2011 fiscal year, the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund said. That's up from 11.9 percent in fiscal year 2010.

With the new year now well under way, U.S. nonprofit groups have indicated that they likely will place heavy emphasis on social media and mobile solutions to drive stronger fundraising and marketing results in coming months, according to Charity Dynamics’ 2012 Digital Marketing Survey.

The survey, which includes feedback from 70 Charity Dynamics clients, revealed shifting priorities in some areas of nonprofits’ marketing plans for the year ahead. 

Among them, 73 percent of respondents indicated that their organizations plan to address social media strategies in 2012.