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A common lament among fundraising professionals, nonprofit board members and wealthy donors is that capital campaigns have become constant. Once noteworthy, these intensive, multiyear efforts — which raise money through methods including phone banks, direct mail and one-on-one conversations with wealthy individuals — are now run-of-the-mill. Some are virtually overlapping, with organizations quietly preparing for another campaign before ending the previous one.

Yet such campaigns are growing in length, ambition and frequency for an uncomplicated reason: They are highly effective.

America’s 50 most generous donors increased their giving by 27.5 percent last year — powered in large part by a $1.5 billion gift from Bill and Melinda Gates and a stunning rise in the number of tech entrepreneurs under 40, three of whom gave more than $500 million each. The increase is striking compared with 2012, when giving by the Philanthropy 50 rose just 4 percent.

Recent changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm have brought about a significant decline in “organic reach,” the number of people who see a post that hasn’t been boosted by paid advertising. Two years ago, organic reach for many posts was at about 16 percent, but over the last several months it’s been throttled to 2 percent or even less. Nonprofit organizations are getting caught in the algorithmic filter, and some say the change has crippled their ability to share critical information and maintain the online communities their memberships rely on.

For nearly a half-century, Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy has taken an unusual approach to studying the charitable giving of the very rich, examining not just how much they give but why they do it and asking whether great wealth comes with an ethical obligation to be financially generous.

Now, as Boston is enjoying one of the most affluent periods in its history, the center is preparing to close.

Answer these questions and take your nonprofit's corporate volunteer program to the next level!

In his Fundraising Summit presentation, consultant and CFRE Roy C. Jones laid out 10 secrets to acquiring donors online through digital technology.

Cari Tuna and her future husband, Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder, are emblematic of a new generation of millennial philanthropists seeking to give far beyond their own communities and experiences. Americans have traditionally focused their donations on organizations such as schools, churches and cultural centers close to home. But with the rise of social networks that connect people the world over instantaneously, many millennials have a broader view of charity.

The ultra-rich continued to give big to American nonprofits in the past year, with the sum of the 10 largest single donations of the year nearly equaling the combined top 10 of 2013. The top donation of 2014 was a $1 billion bequest from Ralph Wilson Jr., a Detroit businessman who owned the Buffalo Bills football team. He died in March at age 95, and now his heirs are deciding how best to adhere to his wishes as his charitable foundation expands.

If you're a fundraising copywriter, you already have most of the tools you need to go from good to great. The rest are available to you. All it takes to get them, and the persuasive power that goes with them, is a lot of hard work.

Scammers routinely try to take advantage of humanitarian disasters to get people to open phishing emails, or to donate money to fake organizations. This month, they combined the two approaches, sending out approximately 700,000 spam emails asking people to donate money to fight Ebola through an Indiegogo fundraiser, according to a report by Silicon Valley-based security firm Barracuda Networks Inc.

This is the first time Barracuda has seen spam email used to solicit donations for an Indiegogo campaign, said Barracuda's senior data scientist Luis Chapetti.