News/Stats/Studies

To thank donors who paid for a new $32-million sports center, Bowling Green State University produced a video featuring some of those very same supporters.

The donors were game. They wore basketball uniforms and tried to bounce and spin a basketball, while acting tough on camera. The video, which was shown at the dedication of the Stroh Center in September, also featured a college student rapping about the donors’ big gifts, while showing the buildings and the basketball court named after them.

Despite the fact that students sign up en masse for social-entrepreneurship classes, intern at nonprofits and participate in charitable extracurricular activities, fewer than 5% of graduates from many top business schools take jobs in nonprofit organizations right out of school.

But these days, the numbers don't tell the whole story. Schools say that plenty of students are going on to do good works, just not in traditional nonprofit jobs. Instead, many students opt for social-responsibility positions at Fortune 500 companies or working at for-profit enterprises that explicitly address energy-access or economic-development issues.

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.

The number of college students who volunteer actually decreased from 2009 to 2010, but the total number of volunteer hours increased, a 2010 study conducted by Volunteering in America showed.

"This data show that the students who are volunteering are doing so more regularly or on a longer-term basis," says Heather Peeler, chief strategy officer for the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Some experts say a key reason that recent graduates are turning to longer volunteer opportunities could be the competitive job market and economic climate.

According to a report released by The Conference Board, the global business research and membership organization, humanitarian needs and the size of a company’s workforce in the local market are the top drivers of the allocation decisions on international charitable contributions made by U.S. corporations.

The 2011 Corporate Contributions Report discussed findings from a survey of 139 U.S.–based corporations conducted by The Conference Board between April and July 2011.

GuideStar and Hope Consulting announced the results of a new study, Money for Good II (MFGII), that shows if nonprofits and information providers are able to provide donors, advisors and foundation grant-makers with the information that they want, where and how they want it, these donors would consider shifting up to $15 billion in charitable dollars to higher-performing nonprofits.

The Reeher Platform has introduced the Reeher Vista Fundraising Profile and Performance Scorecard, a year-end performance report that helps advancement leaders identify areas of success and opportunities for improvement. The Vista Scorecard examines a development department’s performance versus what its performance should be, given the factors unique to each organization.

Overhead is a touchy subject for many nonprofits. Donors who want most or all of their contributions to support an organization's cause may be overly critical of administrative costs and other overhead. Nonprofits, in turn, often feel pressured to keep overhead down and so may misrepresent those costs, reinforcing donors' unrealistic expectations.

Tom Tierney, chairman and co-founder of Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consultant to nonprofits, wrote "The Donor-Grantee Trap" with Richard Steele. Tierney spoke about how a "starvation cycle" is dangerous to charities and the people they serve.

The student-run nonprofit Elmseed Enterprise Fund clinched $25,000 last week after contacting panlists and engaging students outside of dining halls in pursuit of votes in a contest conducted by banking firm JPMorgan Chase.

Elmseed, which is run by Yale students and provides microcredit and consulting services to low-income entrepreneurs in the New Haven community, attained 1,757 votes from Facebook users over eight days to attain 28th place in the fourth Chase Community Giving contest, which awarded a total of $3 million to 100 U.S. nonprofits.

The nonprofit sector is big, getting bigger, and dominated by big organizations and the health and education fields, and it has been whipsawed by big swings in charitable giving over the past decade, a new report says.

The U.S. was home to more than 1.4 million nonprofits in 2010, up 19 percent from 1999, a total that included more than 1 million public charities, says the Nonprofit Sector in Brief, a highlight of trends from The Nonprofit Almanac 2011, which was prepared by the National Center for Charitable Statistics at the Urban Institute.