Target

Causes, which helps donors link up with charities online, has teamed up with gift card marketer Blackhawk Network to sell $25 and $50 prepaid gift cards in 800 Safeway and Vons supermarkets in California. Givers get a tax write-off. Recipients log on to Causes.com/giftcard to choose from more than 1 million nonprofits.

A social-media campaign by the retailer Target was one of two charitable efforts that won a spot on a new list of top 20 social-media campaigns compiled by Forbes magazine. Over two weeks, visitors to Target’s Facebook page were allowed to vote on which of 10 charities would receive the biggest portion of $3-million Target had decided to give.

Corporate profits are on the rebound, but most big businesses say it will be some time before they can give as much cash as they did before the recession, according to a Chronicle survey of 162 of the country’s largest corporations.

What if we could extend this knowledge sharing beyond our own borders? What if we could learn how fundraisers in Bolivia deal with the lack of postal or banking systems? How did a Dutch organization generate more than 500,000 monthly donors? How are Italian organizations using digital media to drive results? How could we, wherever we are located, learn from our fundraising cousins on the other side of the planet?

After the devastating earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, more and more people are texting to give. If it brings in donations from people who wouldn't otherwise give or from folks who then will go on to give larger contributions online or in the mail, that's a good thing — a great thing, actually, to the tune of more than $30 
million just days after the quake hit.

Nonprofits increasingly are modeling their practices after for-profits. This helps fundraisers professionalize their organizations and hold themselves fiscally accountable. One fundraiser who's seen this evolution take place and even helped it along is Ben Vitale, who was recently named president of The Climate Trust, a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit promoting climate change solutions. Vitale has 
a…

Fundraisers across the globe are facing challenges. No matter where your organization is headquartered or where its work takes hold, the issues generally are the same: acquiring, retaining and engaging donors in an ever-changing societal landscape.

Equal Justice USA was founded in 1990 as a program of the Quixote Center, a multi-issue social-justice umbrella organization based in Maryland. In 2008, it separated to become a fully independent organization and moved its headquarters to Brooklyn, N.Y., and just recently opened a West Coast office in Seattle. EJUSA's mission is to build a criminal justice system that is fair, effective and humane, starting with repeal of the death penalty and increased services to families of homicide victims. Its recent organizational accomplishments include ending the death penalty in New York in 2005 and New Jersey in 2007, and gutting Maryland's death penalty in 2009.

Lynn Edmonds, president, L.W. Robbins Associates
Loyal donors are being conservative but holding on. Since the spring, we have seen a slight increase in giving in some audiences but not all. And in certain cases, we have been able to reactivate lapsed donors by decreasing the gift asks.

More than 81,000 nonprofits have partnered with the online shopping mall GoodShop.com and Yahoo-powered search engine GoodSearch.com to enable their supporters to generate donations by shopping online or searching the Internet.