News/Stats/Studies

The anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks says it will be scaling back operations so that it can focus on raising money. For months, WikiLeaks has been prevented from receiving donations through Visa, MasterCard and other firms that process financial transactions. Those firms severed their relations with the organization after American officials described its release of classified documents as damaging to U.S. national security interests.

The Pew Research Center has announced a three-year, $1.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study the changing role of public libraries in the digital age.

Awarded through the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project, the initiative seeks to determine the ways in which public library patrons' needs and expectations are shifting with the proliferation of e-books, mobile connectivity, and digital content.

Fundraising industry reports can help any nonprofit shape its strategy and sharpen its fundraising efforts. It's a matter of sorting through data and finding the nuggets that can benefit your professional learning.

Blackbaud announced the release of the 2011 Global State of the Nonprofit Industry report, featuring survey results from 2200 international respondents covering nonprofit general operations, fundraising, technology and Internet usage, and impact reporting and board performance. The results were also released today at the International Fundraising Congress (IFC) in the Netherlands.

A key finding from the report is there is a growing sense of optimism in the global nonprofit sector regarding growth in staffing and earned and charitable income in 2012.

Good journalism is not enough to sustain nonprofit online news. That is one of the key findings of a new Knight Foundation study, "Getting Local," that profiled a number of local nonprofits online.
 
Those nonprofits have to act more like for-profit businesses, the study suggests, including experimenting with different revenue models and being more entrepreneurial.

Almost all Americans made an effort to affect positive social change last year, and most say it is important to them personally to be socially engaged, a new study says.

More than nine in 10 respondents say they have taken action to create social change within the last year, and over three-quarters say such involvement is personally meaningful, according to an online survey of more than 2,100 adults conducted by Walden University and Harris Interactive.

The Alliance for Children and Families released a new, national report Oct. 17 that is designed to assist the nonprofit human services industry maintain high performance, despite difficult constraints, while also identifying game-changing opportunities.

The report, Disruptive Forces: Driving a Human Services Revolution, was developed through a partnership between the Alliance and national accounting and advisory firm Baker Tilly. It features six disruptive forces deemed to have the potential to greatly affect the nonprofit human services industry.

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.

Blackbaud released a fundraising trends report based on monthly findings from The Blackbaud Index and featuring commentary from Association for Healthcare Philanthropy and American Health Assistance Foundation on the newly released specialty index focused on healthcare organizations.

Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud’s chief scientist and creator of The Blackbaud Index, noted that although overall fundraising grew by a healthy 6.8 percent during June through August versus the same period last year, the Index showed growth slowing in July and now August.

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.