American Cancer Society

Employee matching-gift and volunteer-grant programs are two underutilized sources of fundraising for many nonprofit organizations.

Here are five principles that characterize today’s most innovative nonprofits and thoughts on how you can apply them to your organization.

On Leap Day, I hopped on an early-morning train down to Washington, D.C., to attend the 2012 Nonprofit Mobile Day prior to the Washington Nonprofit Conference. And in the opening keynote, David Balcom, managing director of digital platforms at the American Cancer Society, laid out why mobile matters.

Exercising for a good cause continued to grow in popularity and in the sums it raises for charity in 2011, according to figures revealed at the annual conference of the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council.     The top 30 “thon” fundraising programs generated $1.69 billion in gross revenue for charity last year, up $40.8 million or 2.46 percent from 2010 levels and the second straight year of fundraising growth, the council’s sixth annual “Run Walk Ride Thirty” study reports.

During the America East Conference Basketball Championship, Newman’s Own Foundation unveiled the top grant recipients of its third-annual Campus Community Service Challenge.  Engineers Without Borders, in partnership with University at Maine, received the top grant of $25,000. Earth Day Southern Tier working with Binghamton University’s SUNY VINES (Volunteers Improving Neighborhood Environments) received $15,000. Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Capital Region, who partnered with University of Albany’s Reclassifying All Children Equally (R.A.C.E.), and Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, who partnered with University of Vermont’s Adaptive Sports, each will receive a $10,000 grant.

To help nonprofit employers better understand their employees’ engagement, Opportunity Knocks, the national nonprofit job board and HR resource, conducted a landmark national study and released the OK Research project, Engaging the Nonprofit Workforce: Mission, Management and Emotion.

This report is the only of its kind on employee engagement specifically focused on the nonprofit sector. The goal of this project is to better understand the ways in which nonprofit employees are engaged and the impact of employee engagement and disengagement upon employees, nonprofit organizations and communities.

Women teasingly taking off lingerie; obscene language flying left and right; graphic violence both bloody and disturbing. Is this the content of some R-rated film? Could be. But these days, eye-opening scenes like this can also be found in charity marketing campaigns.

Marketing consultant John J. Burnett understands that in these tough economic times, charities are trying harder than ever to get attention.

However, he cautions, “the risks are greater than the level of awareness they are going to create. You could end up trivializing the cause or diminishing the actual problem.”

Today I received an e-mail from customer experience management solutions company Tealeaf Technology that really caught my eye. It is a great example of marrying customer engagement and corporate philanthropy to do good for the fundraising sector and the bottom line.

Merkle, the nation’s largest privately held agency, has appointed Angie Moore senior vice president, CRM officer for its nonprofit division. This move accentuates Merkle’s emphasis on bringing the full array of customer relationship marketing (CRM) services to the nonprofit marketplace.

In her new role, Moore will lead strategic partnerships with major nonprofit organizations to drive Merkle’s CRM and integrated marketing strategies into this market. Previously, Moore was general manager of Merkle’s nonprofit practice.

Lawmakers and witnesses at a Senate Finance Committee hearing disagreed Tuesday over whether the charitable deduction is sacrosanct­ — or fair game for policymakers who are seeking to raise federal revenue or make the tax system more fair.

The Senate committee played host to the hearing to spotlight issues involved in the debate over whether to limit the charitable deduction as part of a plan to reduce the nation’s budget deficit.