NPO income up

Survey Shows Brightening Picture For Many Nonprofits :: PNNOnline ::

Pretty good news for a Friday.

International Funding

EU Foundations are more likely to behave in an international way then their American counterparts. The top 40 European Foundations provided 2002 grants of 3.2 billion euros, $3.5 billion, almost all of them gave outside their borders. The top 40 American Foundations gave more 7.4 billion euros, $8.1 billion but only 14% gave outside the USA
American Foundations are not the largest asset holders or the biggest donors. The largest foundation, both in total assets and grant making, is the Wellcome Trust headquartered in London; it gave $765 million, and had assets of $14.3 billion.
In comparison, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest in the U.S. in total assets and grant making, gave $1.15 billion in 2002, and had assets of $33.2 billion.
It may be a good idea to look first for support in your own back yard if you are American but do not ignore the international route.

Fund Raising and SPAM

Charities are hearing increasing criticism that their slowness to adopt the Internet for fund raising needlessly increases fund raising costs. This raises the question how exactly would charities go about using the net as a low cost fund raising vehicle. If a low percentage cost is the goal the answer is easy to see. SPAM yes-significant amounts of SPAM. Internet fund raising in its simplest and most cost effective form is direct marketing and direct marketing requires a way to acquire donors who use and are sensitive to the acquisition method that will be used to renew their gifts. If an organization wants donors that will give by mail efficiency dictates they use mail to acquire them. If telemarketing is the chosen method then phone acquisition is used. The concept has been proven time and again. When direct mail became a true fund raising force in the 1970’s many charitable organizations feared an acquisition mail backlash and avoided it, those that adopted it efficiently raised money. By the 1980’s the use of purchased lists and mass mail to acquire donors was common practice. The story repeated itself in the 90’s with telemarketing. In both cases volunteer boards hated the thought but as the results proved the concepts more and more signed on. The story will repeat again on the Net all that is needed is an efficient cost effective Internet acquisition method and it exists its called SPAM. Fund raisers will come up with more sophisticated better sounding names, targeting will get more efficient but in the end large scale internet donor acquisition will owe it start to humble annoying SPAM. It will not be loved but it will work. The current critics that want charities to quickly move fund raising to the Net should be careful about what they wish for because it will come. It will not be popular but it will become a fund raising mainstay.

You can't always get what you want…

…but you just might find, you get what you need. Rolling Stones

Last week’s NY Times Magazine had an article on some interesting research about affective forecasting. That’s research about how well people can predict how they will feel about events such as getting something they want or losing something valuable. In general they found: “On average, bad events proved less intense and more transient than test participants predicted. Good events proved less intense and briefer as well.”

What’s this have to do with cancer? Well…

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