What Taxes Mean to Donors

For a long time now, I have wondered just how important the tax deduction is to donors. This article says that for many, it's not a big deal:

.http://www.philanthropyjournal.org/resources/fundraisinggiving/impact-changes-tax-rates-charitable-giving

Getting back up...

My friends....
It's been much too long, and I'm sorry for the silence. It's grant season over here, and i've been talking to many of you on the phone and in person about applications. It's the best part of the job, but it leads to neglect of the blog. the real enemy of the blog, of course, is high expectations of the things one should write. To defeat this, I'm just quickly putting up some article links that struck me as important and useful, viz:

...a Boston Globe article with inspiring fundraising stories re: the MFA,

...a David Carr piece from the NYT about social networking & the Obama campaign,

...a Chronicle of Philanthropy piece on what nonprofits can hope for from the Obama presidency,

...and that is all. More will come soon!

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.