News/Stats/Studies

Among 76 organizations responding to a survey of the 200 largest U.S. charities based on a listed compiled annually by Forbes magazine, 65 percent are blogging and 42 percent report social media are very important to their fundraising strategy.

The share of charities using some form of social media, known as Web 2.0, is up 8 percentage points and 22 percentage points, respectively, from similar studies in 2008 and 2007.

Eighty-seven percent of financial advisers expect income taxes will rise for most of their clients over the next 12 to 18 months, and one in four expect their clients will increase their charitable giving to offset tax hikes, a new survey says.

Another 48 percent of advisers expect their clients to maintain their level of giving, despite ongoing uncertainty about the financial markets and an overall decline in charitable giving in 2009, says the 2010 Advice & Giving survey by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund.

After a year of steep drops in private giving to higher education, college fund raisers expect the amount of money raised in the fiscal year that just ended on most campuses to be 4.3 percent higher than the year before, according to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education's Fundraising Index. The index, an online survey of senior fund raisers at the council's 2,000 member institutions, had a 7.5-percent response rate. The index was released on Monday, during the association's annual conference here for top fund raisers.

At nonprofit groups in the New York metropolitan area, more chief executive officers than other senior staff members took pay cuts in the 2010 fiscal year, according to a new survey of compensation trends by the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York. However, austerity wasn’t universal for top leaders, and signs point to bigger paychecks ahead for more of them in 2011.

Thirty-one percent of organizations reported a pay increase to their top executives in 2010 compared with the previous fiscal year, and 42 percent expected another increase next year.

Nearly 40 percent of American charities say they have too few staff members to effectively deliver their programs or services, according to a new survey released Wednesday.

The survey also found that about one out of every three nonprofit groups had cut staff size in recent months and that many more had taken a variety of steps, including increasing employee workloads, that usually strain a work force.

Blackbaud announced the launch of The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving, an online fundraising index that reports revenue trends of 1,787 nonprofit organizations, representing $399 million in 12-month online revenue on a monthly basis. The index reports that online revenue increased by 23 percent for the three months ending May 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009.

Foundations, donors, and others involved in giving away money need to change quickly to keep up with the world around them, argues a new report by the Monitor Institute.

In the Spring/Summer 2010 Mission Matters study by the Commonfund Institute, Verne Sedlacek, president and CEO of Commonfund, takes a look at the economics of nonprofits and offers five takeaways about the nonprofit economic landscape.

The fundraising performance of the UK's 500 biggest charities was significantly better than expected in the early part of the recession, according to figures released today.

The Charity Market Monitor survey shows that their combined income in the financial year 2008/09 fell by £64m, a drop of 1.1 per cent. A year ago, the same publication predicted that the fall could be as high as £185m, or 3.5 per cent.

At first glance, Congressmen Hal Rogers and Chaka Fattah don't have much in common. Rogers, a Republican, represents a rural district in Kentucky. Fattah, a Democrat, hails from an urban district in Philadelphia. Thanks to Rogers, this year's federal spending will include $18.9 million funneled to a half-dozen non-profit groups he founded that do everything from research homeland security technologies to clean litter along his district's highways. One sponsors summer camps for students called "Rogers Scholars" and "Rogers Explorers."

Fattah directed $3.5 million this year to three non-profit groups he founded that provide scholarships and educational programs. One organizes the annual "Fattah Conference on Higher Education."