American Red Cross

Grizzard Communications Group announced that the fundraising agency has hired Todd Bemis as digital creative director and strategist. Bemis brings almost 20 years of extensive agency experience leading design efforts for Fortune 100s and major international nonprofits to Grizzard. Bemis will focus on developing new digital products and offerings for Grizzard clients that help boost fundraising revenue, increase engagement and strengthen brands.

The American Red Cross announced that it has received more than $11-million in donations for its efforts to help the millions of families displaced by Superstorm Sandy. Among the gifts announced by donors to the Red Cross National Disaster Fund are the New York Yankees' $500,000, Citi Foundation's $100,000, and CVS Caremark's $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in food and bottled water.

Nonprofit organizations are starting to mobilize donations to help victims of Hurricane Sandy, but so far the sums appear to be small. That’s in part because the two big groups involved in disaster fundraising, the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, declined to release a tally of how much they have collected so far.

United States consumers will soon be able to donate to their presidential campaign of choice by texting a keyword to a short code on their mobile phones for the first time.

Text donations were expected earlier this summer but were held up by the wireless carriers — key participants in the programs — as they sought legal protections over fraud and profitability. Both the campaigns for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have reportedly said the capability will be enabled soon.

Recent tweets from folks you should be following.

You can already send money to your favorite charity via text message. Now it may not be long before you’ll be able to do the same for political candidates. On June 11 the Federal Election Commission unanimously agreed to let campaigns begin accepting modest political contributions via mobile messaging, a ruling that even campaign finance watchdogs lobbied for as an antidote to the influence of billionaire-funded superPACs.

In a nutshell, your mantra should be, ‘Community first, monetize later.’

Keeping with its history of being a nonprofit activist, Acteva has entered into a
collaborative alliance with TechSoup, an NPO that enables the empowerment of technology for Public Libraries and Non-Profit Organizations in USA.

Attention! 
Social Media Does Not Equal 
Fundraising! In a nutshell, your mantra should be, ‘Community first, monetize later.’

Charities are looking for ways to visualize data to explain complex issues succinctly, spur advocacy, support their fundraising, and show donors where their money is going. Some, like the World Wildlife Fund, are creating infographics that can be shared easily via social media, while others are creating interactive Web tools that allow users to slice and dice the data on their own.

Good visualizations can also help charities better understand their own data and use those insights to improve their programs, says Jake Porway, founder of Data Without Borders.