NonProfit Pro

If you're on a June/July fiscal year, you need to make plans now for a strong year's end. That means updating your messaging that you decided last July was the best approach. It means confirming or lining up your interviews for those story-based letters. It means making sure that you're still sending to the right segments.

Writing fundraising copy should be detailed and painstaking for you. Reading it should be fast and easy for your donor.

To get a handle on what’s in store for 2015, NonProfit PRO rounded up some of the nonprofit industry’s finest, who were kind enough to share their nonprofit trends for 2015. Here are two trends on mobile and planned giving.

Comic Relief has broken the £1 billion ($1.48 billion) barrier after 30 years, with more than £70.5 million already raised at this year. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the charity, which has raised £960 million and become something of a British institution since it began in 1985.

Tweets from South by Southwest (#SXSW).

Contributions by Washington, D.C.-area employees to the Combined Federal Campaign, the government’s workplace giving drive, declined again last year to $49.2 million, a drop of more than 2 percent. The downward trend among Washington workers, who account for the largest share of donors in the federal drive, was the fourth annual dip since 2010, when they contributed nearly $67 million.

The nonprofit Horizon Cross Cultural Center will pay more than $1.7 million to settle charges that it falsified records and overbilled local agencies for providing transportation services to elderly Orange County residents, according to a settlement agreement finalized last week. The director of Horizon's transportation services and a project manager falsified trip records and billed both the county and city of Garden Grove for bus trips that never occurred, according to an internal investigation report conducted by the Orange County Transportation Authority that was also made public last week.

When Federation and Employment Guidance Services announced that it planned to close amid a $20 million revenue shortfall, the nonprofit world was shocked. But the ruinous series of decisions that wrecked FEGS—one of New York’s largest, most well-regarded social services organizations—was years in the making.

A Capital review of the nonprofit’s financial disclosure forms and yearly tax returns reveals an agency engaged in risky long-term behavior and slowly drowning in debt.

The nomination period for NonProfit PRO's inaugural Nonprofit Professionals of the Year Awards is underway. So start recognizing your peers, and send your nominations in today!

Do I really think we need to make a choice between members and donors? Nope. We just need to manage both of the programs better and make sure they are treated in a holistic and integrated manner.