American Red Cross

FundRaising Success speaks with Luke Lightfoot, marketing and client services expert at mobile Web solutions provider UR Mobile, about mobile fundraising.

The American Red Cross has committed an additional $3.6 million to underwrite operating expenses at Hospital Bernard Mevs Project Medishare Critical Care Trauma and Rehabilitation Program in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This increases the total funding of the hospital to $8.6 million since the earthquake struck. The funding will support services until December 2012.

The use of .org at the end of a website’s address has long been the accepted online shorthand to identify sites that are operated by nonprofits.

But now the key organization that manages nonprofit addresses wants charities to adopt the suffix .ngo. It also wants to implement a process that vets organizations to ensure that anybody with the .ngo address is a legitimate nonprofit, saying that now it’s too easy to commit fraud using a .org address because anyone can create one.

Two big charities, the American Red Cross and CARE, said they are investigating reports that computer hackers gave them gifts using credit-card information stolen from a global intelligence company—and they promised to help any victims of fraud get their money back.

The hackers said they had used the credit-card data to make some charitable contributions and posted screen shots of receipts for donations to groups including the Red Cross and CARE.

A hacking movement calling itself Anonymous said yesterday that it stole thousands of credit card numbers and other client information from a U.S. security think tank with customers including the Air Force, defense contractors, police agencies, technology companies and banks. One hacker said the goal of the attack on Stratfor Global Intelligence was to pilfer funds from individuals’ accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed that unauthorized transactions were made using their credit cards.

In nearly 90 percent of high net worth households, women are either the sole decision maker or an equal partner in decisions about charitable giving, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2011 Study of High Net Worth Women’s Philanthropy.

As end-of-the year giving gets under way, some charities like the American Red Cross are skipping disaster pictures and switching to gentler imagery to urge people to forgo extraneous holiday gifts and, instead, give “something that means something.”

To deliver its message, the American Red Cross has a new animated character in its multimedia campaign highlighting the seasonal dilemma of whether to please family and friends with material gifts or to give them something that betters the lives of others.

Recent tweets from folks you should be following.

The number of college students who volunteer actually decreased from 2009 to 2010, but the total number of volunteer hours increased, a 2010 study conducted by Volunteering in America showed.

"This data show that the students who are volunteering are doing so more regularly or on a longer-term basis," says Heather Peeler, chief strategy officer for the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Some experts say a key reason that recent graduates are turning to longer volunteer opportunities could be the competitive job market and economic climate.

Even as the nation weathers an economic downturn for a third straight holiday season, the majority of Americans are more committed than ever to charitable giving, according to a new American Red Cross poll.

A telephone survey of 1,020 adults conducted earlier this fall found that even though 67 percent of Americans didn’t think the economic downturn would last this long, they still want to give to charities, with more than seven out of 10 saying they expect to donate more or about the same this holiday season as they did last year.