Why Rich People Give

Came across this in a daily news summary from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. It's a great little education in fundraising--no groundbreaking news, (people give to causes because their friends ask them too!) but a lot of affirmation of basic common sense. which is always useful and grounding.

Here's the study (pdf) on which the article is based. It comes out of Penn's center for High Impact Philanthropy.

Idealware Online Seminars

I've gone on about Idealware.org before, but they just sent around a list of upcoming online seminars, and they look very useful--selecting an inexpensive donor database, email newsletter system, online conferencing, web analytics... all my favorite things.  And the site has a lot of great articles and suggestions. It will make you look smart.

Can't Stop Posting!

sorry to be bombarding you today, but this was in my inbox this morning from the folks at the Harvard Business Review about what to do with underperforming employees & I thought it'd be useful to some of you:

Like Pandora, but for Philanthropy

Here's an interesting concept: a search engine that matches peoples' interests with  appropriate nonprofits.  it's called Donation Dashboard. Sean Stannard-Stockton compares it to the music site Pandora... 

What the Kids are into these days...

We just got a great opportunity to bring in an exciting speaker from Britain, DK from Mediasnackers, to talk about using technology to reach younger audiences.

From all accounts, he's an amazing speaker who gives a lot of very practical advice on millenials. 

Sign up here.

Also, there's still room in our IRS Form 990 session, which will be on September 16 from 9-11.  Sign up for that here.

Bits from the web...

I've become a slave to Google Reader--it's an efficent way to read a lot of blogs, which is both the good news and the bad news. Here's some of what I've found:

Good Fundraising Advice on Donor Power blog

Nonprofit Board Crisis picks up an LATimes story about the future of print journals and newspapers as nonprofits.  He also has a new piece as of yesterday about family members on boards.

Philanthropy 2173 has yet another interesting piece, (and a funky graph, which I love) about the future of the net and fundraising.

...and a friend sent me a recent article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy  about the phenomenon of "musical chairs" with Directors of Development in the current market.  So many organizations are looking for a Director of Development that mediocre people can hop from job to job without having to really prove themselves.  The Chronic is subscription-only, though, so I'm having trouble linking it here...