News/Stats/Studies

Americans say they are more likely in 2011 to increase their charitable giving than to decrease it, marking the first time in four years that donors are more upbeat than downbeat about their giving, a new survey says.

Compared to 2010, 29 percent more households say they play to give more, 20 percent say they plan to give the same amount, and 48 percent fewer say they will give less, says the annual Dunham+Company New Year's Philanthropy Survey conducted by Wilson Research Strategies.

In a clear signal that the economic recovery has not yet arrived on most campuses, private giving to American colleges last year barely improved after a precipitous drop the year before.

Donations to higher education rose 0.5 percent during the 2010 fiscal year, according to findings of the annual Voluntary Support of Education Survey, which were released by the Council for Aid to Education on Wednesday. Adjusted for inflation, giving declined 0.6 percent.

Mobile donations serve as a great complement to more traditional giving channels such as direct mail, e-mail and online giving, according to recent findings from a survey commissioned by The mGive Foundation. The survey revealed that 86 percent of respondents who give to an organization via SMS-based mobile campaigns would consider giving larger dollar amounts via alternative giving channels.

In addition, 80 percent of survey respondents who were regular online and/or direct mail donors indicated that donating money via text would not preclude them from giving a larger amount via alternative channels.

Today, with over a trillion dollars a year in revenues, hundreds of thousands of nonprofit organizations of all sorts and sizes qualify under federal, state and local laws for multiple tax benefits.

Federal, state and local policymakers in both parties are asking tough but timely questions about the nonprofit sector: How much does it lighten local property tax coffers and reduce federal tax revenues? What is the total tab for all the tax-funded subsidies? And what does the wider public actually get in return for all the tax breaks and government funding?

Strong holiday-season contributions have made many charities optimistic that their fund-raising returns will improve sharply in 2011.

Sixty-two percent of 245 nonprofit organizations surveyed by The Chronicle reported that they raised more in November and December 2010 than at the same time in 2009. But even as some groups are rebounding quickly from the recession, others continue to struggle. Twenty-four percent of organizations reported year-end gains of more than 20 percent, while 28 percent reported drops in giving. One in 10 said giving was flat during the holidays.

The Bay Citizen, the “nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization” that launched last May with $5 million in funding from billionaire Warren Hellman, said Thursday it’s subsequently raised an additional $10 million.

In recent months, The Bay Citizen has taken to asking readers and others to contribute to its cause, akin to the pledge drives used to solicit philanthropic funding for many public television stations.

College fund raisers estimate that private giving in 2010 was up almost 3 percent from 2009, according to the results of a survey by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. The CASE Fundraising Index, which surveys senior fund raisers about the past 12 months and asks them to look to the future, showed that fund raisers were more optimistic about next year, when they expect giving to go up 5.4 percent.

The year 2011 is shaping up to be even more difficult than 2010 for many charities.

While donations from individuals seem to be rising as the economy improves, foundation giving remains flat, and corporate contributions have yet to rebound. Federal stimulus money will soon come to an end, and many charities have already tapped their rainy-day funds to respond to increased demand for their services and to stave off significant cutbacks.

Ina sign that donors are feeling better about the economy, the number of American adults who said they plan to increase their contributions to charity this year increased to 18 percent, according to an annual survey.

Meanwhile, the share of people who said they would give less to charity in 2011 shrank to 14 percent in this year’s survey, down from 27 percent (2009 and 2010) and 26 percent (2008).

Despite the attention paid to the role of social media after the earthquake in Haiti last year, many more people learned about opportunities to give from more traditional communications channels, such as television and print media, according to a new survey.

More than 63 percent of respondents said they had learned about ways to contribute from television programming, and just over 50 percent cited television commercials. More than 29 percent of participants reported that they had found out about giving through print media.