Business Week

More and more religious instutions are using credit cards to collect donations at houses of worship. One big player is a service called ParishPay, which works with many Catholic churches and a few synagogues to help sign up worshipers to pay via credit or debit card or automatic payment from their bank accounts. Nearly 1,000 institutions have joined the service, and it claims a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in giving by individuals who enroll.

Another is SecureGive, which has kiosks in churches, Hindu temples and some zoos and hospitals, too.

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.

UNLV received a $15 million donation from the Ted and Doris Lee family to bolster business education. The donation is among the largest individual gifts to a college or school in UNLV’s 54-year history and the largest private donation in support of faculty endowments.

It comes at a time when state funding for UNLV has dropped by about $73 million over the past few years, leading to the elimination of 19 degree and school programs this year.

The Rockefeller Foundation announced the recipients of the 2011 Jane Jacobs Medal — Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, film producers and founders of the Tribeca Film Festival, Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City Department of Transportation commissioner, and Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

Each recipient will donate the cash award of $50,000 to charity:

• Sadik-Khan: Safe Streets Fund
• White: Transportation Alternatives
• De Niro and Rosenthal: Tribeca Film Institute's Tribeca Teaches program

Warrington, Pa., December 9, 2009, PRNewswire - Last year Special Equestrians was one of 10 nonprofits chosen from nearly 600 applicants to receive part of $25,000 in PR service grants. "We've always taken corporate social responsibility very seriously, and it gives all of us here a warm and fuzzy feeling to do what little we can to give something back to worthwhile causes," said Neotrope CEO and co-founder, Christopher L. Simmons. "We learned many years ago that it was better to donate our expertise than simply writing checks, as it provided more real support for the nonprofit organization."

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., July 14, 2009, Business Week — Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the activity by nonprofit foundations to help rural parts of the country has been "woefully inadequate" and encouraged workers in those areas to focus on alternative energy initiatives.

June 15, 2009, Business Week — The nonprofit Bikestation reached a crossroads in late 2007. Founded in Long Beach, Calif., in 1996 to design, build, and manage bike transit centers, the 10-employee organization couldn't handle all the calls coming in on its $300,000 budget, funded mostly through earned income. With little grant funding available, the board determined that the best way to meet demand was to raise money from private investors­—which meant turning Bikestation into a for-profit social venture. "We just didn't have the resources to expand the mission and the vision further," says Andréa White-Kjoss, who joined the nonprofit as CEO in 2004.

May 21, 2009, Business Week — A question: If you have 347 followers on the Twitter microblogging service, what are the chances that they'll click on the same online ad you clicked on last night? Advertisers are dying to know. Or, say you and a colleague exchange e-mails on a Saturday night. Can managers assume that you have a tight working relationship? Researchers at IBM and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are investigating.

May 20, 2009, Business Week — In this enlightened day and age, whether times are good or bad, companies must be socially responsible. That's a given. But tough economic conditions underscore a blunt reality. A company's foremost responsibility is to do well. That may sound politically incorrect, but the reason is inexorable. Winning companies create jobs, pay taxes, and strengthen the economy. Winning companies, in other words, enable social responsibility, not the other way around. And so, right now—as always—companies should be putting profitability first. It's the necessity that makes every other necessity possible.

Of all America’s charities rated by the nationally respected independent evaluator Charity Navigator, just seven percent receive a consecutive four-star evaluation. Island Harvest, Long Island’s largest hunger relief organization, joins that rank scoring four stars — Charity Navigator’s highest rating — for the fourth consecutive year. The coveted designation demonstrates that Island Harvest consistently executes its mission in a fiscally responsible way, outperforming most other charitable organizations across the country.