News/Stats/Studies

WASHINGTON—Members of associations across the country give generously to community causes and organizations, but fewer than 15 percent ever make a contribution beyond dues and fees to the professional associations to which they belong. A new study recently published by ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, The Decision to Give: What Motivates Individuals to Support Professional Associations, explores giving by association members both to community causes and to associations, while also highlighting some opportunities to increase donations among association members.

For the seventh year in a row, Charity Navigator has published its list of America's Most "Charity-Conscious" Cities. After analyzing and averaging nonprofit efficiency and fundraising from over 30 cities, their highly scientific score has ranked the cities. Pittsburgh ranked #1, while Baltimore came in at #30, far below the national average in nearly all categories.

Most people say they care about supporting effective charities over mediocre ones, but they don’t necessarily have the appetite for research that could help them sort the good from the bad.

That’s one of the findings of a new study of donors conducted by Hope Consulting, a firm in San Francisco. Based on a poll of 4,000 people and on interviews with donors, the study was supported by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, the Metanoia Fund, and the Rockefeller and William and Flora Hewlett foundations.

Americans are happy with the job nonprofits are doing but still plan to give less to charity in 2010, a new survey says.

While 80 percent of 1,000 people surveyed for Fenton Communications by InsightExpress say their view of nonprofit performance is positive, nearly two-thirds say they either will give less in 2010 than did in 2009 or keep their giving flat, says the 2010 Fenton Forecast: Leadership and Effectiveness Among Nonprofits.

May, 2010 - Individual charitable giving in 2009 amounted to $217.3 billion, a decline of $11.2 billion or 4.9 percent from the estimated $228.5 billion total in 2008, according to the latest report by researchers at the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College and published by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.  This 5% decline is in addition to the 6 percent decline that the Center calculated in 2008.

For 2010, the researchers project annualized individual giving totals (also known as household giving) will range between approximately $222 billion and $227 billion, an increase between 3 and 4.5  percent over the estimated total for 2009. The projected growth is based on analysis of the first two quarters according to scenarios that assume relatively low and high economic growth.

Recently, nonprofit software company Blackbaud released its top 10 predicted nonprofit trends. This list of emerging trends was compiled "based on the combined input from Blackbaud management, nonprofit customers, partners and industry leaders who work directly with nonprofits," said Melanie Mathos, public relations manager for Blackbaud.

Americans donated $217.3-billion in 2009, a decrease of $11.2-billion or 4.9 percent compared to 2008, according to new estimates from researchers at the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College. 

The researchers are more optimistic about giving in 2010. They expect giving by individuals to range between $222-billion and $227-billion, an increase of 3 to 4.5 percent.

Private philanthropy and remittances from the developed to the developing world in 2008 totaled nearly twice the amount of government aid, a new report says.

Private giving and remittances - money sent by immigrants in the U.S. back to their home countries -- totaled $233 billion in 2008, compared to $121 billion in government aid, says the 2010 Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances published by the Center for Global Prosperity at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

The vast majority of the nation's nonprofits are engaging in efforts to innovate and measure program effectiveness, a new report from the Johns Hopkins Listening Post Project finds.

Based on a survey of more than four hundred nonprofits working in the fields of children and family services, elderly housing and services, community and economic development, and the arts, the report, Nonprofits, Innovation, and Performance Measurement: Separating Fact From Fiction (26 pages, PDF), found that 82 percent of respondents reported implementing an innovative program or service within the past five years. This was particularly true among larger organizations, challenging the common assumption that organizations become less innovative as they grow in size. The report also found that more than two-thirds of respondents reported having at least one innovation in the past two years that they wanted to adopt but were unable to, with 86 percent of those respondents blaming a lack of funding for their inability to do so.

Donations to the nation’s biggest charities are growing rapidly in the first quarter of 2010, compared with the same time in 2009, a sign that many nonprofit groups are making a strong recovery from the fund-raising troubles they suffered last year, according to a new Chronicle survey.

Giving grew by a median of 11 percent in the first three months of 2010, compared with 2009, meaning that donations to half of the charities grew faster while the other half were faring less well.