You are browsing: Fundraising
Charity Raters Part II: Managing Your Rating
In Part I of this two-part article, we summarized the features and criteria of six of the best known “charity raters” including Charity Navigator, Better Business Bureau, and others. Many readers added thoughtful comments and noted lesser-known raters …
Getting to 100% Board Giving
Having 100% of board members make personal donations is a cliché we don’t like. It’s not a meaningful measure of board member commitment, and typically creates a situation where even the best board members have to be nagged. BUT, if you do have this re …
Charity Raters Part I: Charting the Bad and the Bad
Wouldn’t it be great if there were an objective rating system so that donors could choose the best nonprofits to donate to just as investors use rating agencies to pick the best companies to invest in? Don’t answer; it’s a rhetorical question. Here’s w …
Donor-Advised Funds: Non-Transparent Tax Shelters for Good
Nonprofits are probably most familiar with donor-advised funds (DAFs) at community foundations: a donor gives, let’s say, $1 million to a community foundation and gets a $1 million tax deduction that year. Over the next several years, the donor …
Getting Real About Real-Time Evaluation
Every once in a while a field creeps closer to actually being helpful to nonprofits. Thanks to evaluators Clare Nolan and Fontane Lo for explaining a type of program evaluation — and how to make it work for you. Have you ever had an eval …
Take A Fresh Look at Scrip Fundraising
Wait! Scrip is not just for churches and schools anymore. Increasingly, nonprofit cultural centers, health clinics, civil rights organizations and environmental coalitions are finding scrip to be a comparatively easy way to raise funds: How …
Organizing the Board to Support the Revenue Strategy
Instead of focusing only on how board members can raise individual donations (or not!), think more broadly (and effectively) about how board members can support the key aspects of your organization's business/revenue strategy:In the quest for funds …
Contract Wizardry: Conjuring Impact from Government Contracts
Have you ever tried to piece together eleven government contracts for overlapping programs, trying to make them fit together to fund all the costs? Or have you had six foundation grants, all for the same program area, but each requiring different …
Comparing Cheap and Free “Donate Now” Button Services
Thinking about changing your Donate Button, or maybe getting one for the first time? Jenny Henry of Sumac Software has compiled this guide to online donation services that are quick and easy to use. But first, we hear from Brady …
Regrets of a Former Arts Funder
As Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the San Francisco Foundation, I and philanthropic colleagues often bemoaned how fragile many culturally specific organizations were. One person would wonder why there were so few financially stable Afri …
