Why the poor are more generous, the wealthy more stingy

Great article in the Atlantic by Ken Stern called "Why the Rich Don't Give to Charity: The article talks about research looking into the relative size of donations among different economic classes. The findings included:

In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.

One reasonable explaination? Low-income people are more likely to see the need than those who live more sheltered lives. When the wealthy are exposed to the issues, their generosity rises to meat the level of those in the lower economic brackets:

...when both groups were exposed to a sympathy-eliciting video on child poverty, the compassion of the wealthier group began to rise, and the groups’ willingness to help others became almost identical.

The study also found that wealthy people living in more economically diverse communities gave more than those who lived in more wealthy enclaves. To me, this all doesn't surprise me much. People who live with problems in their back-yard are more likely to be motivated and educated about the issues, and willing to help change them. But even more to the point-- and this is something I didn't see addressed in the article-- people living in communities experiencing poverty-related issues are probably asked to give more often. By virtue of where they live, they are probably part of a more diverse network of people, including people involved in non-profit and social justice efforts on a personal level. The take-away for me is twofold- 1) that our job as fundraisers is to educate and expose those with the most capacity to give to the needs that are out there. 2) we need to find ways to reach and ASK those who have the highest capacity to give to get involved. This means showing them the problem, and how it affects real people.

Social Media Reality Check

Re-posting from Care2.com's blog, frogloop:

The U.S. Population Does Not Spend Their Day Using Social Media

Guess how much of the U.S. population (comprised of 311,446,341 people) uses social
media these days? The stats may suprise you.

Twitter: 1.1 % of the U.S.
population is on Twitter. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

Facebook: While Facebook says that they have 150M U.S. “active” users,
which is 48% of the U.S. population, only 50% of active users login any given
day. So 24% of the U.S. population logs into Facebook on any given day to check
or post updates. (source: Facebook)

LinkedIn: 0.37% of the U.S.
population is on LinkedIn. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

YouTube: 19.94% of the U.S population is on YouTube. (source: April 2011
results from Experian Hitwise.)

MySpace: 1.19% of the U.S. population is
on MySpace. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)"

Holy moly. 1/4 of Americans check their facebook page EVERY DAY. That's actually pretty revolutionary when you think about it, especially when you consider how relatively new the site is in the grand scheme of things.

Still, 75% of Americans don't check it every day. And 52% of the population aren't on it at all.

It all goes back to who you're trying to reach. If you are looking to highly educated, computer saavy individuals, it's probably still worth it log on and spread the word, but only as an augment to other strategies.

A Different Kind of Funding for a Different Kind of Film

A Different Kind of Funding for a Different Kind of Film

I have lots of admiration for creativity and entrepreneurship this filmmaker shows in crowdsourcing funding for his next film. He's literally funding it "frame by frame!"

Putting a face to a cause...

Thought this was the funniest fundraising idea I've ever heard...

Your moustache makes a good point

Keeping your Organization on the Road with a Dashboard

An important element of running a successful development program, and a successful organization, is to have effective management and reporting tools in place.

This article from BlueAvacado presents a nice model for reports to the board that help managers present information about the organization at the adequate level of detail, with coding that aids in comprehension. They call it a Dashboard and it looks like this:

Just like a traffic light, the green areas represent areas where things are running smoothly, yellow represents caution, and red represents danger. You can create one of these matrices for each major area of operations: Development, Finance, Human Resources, Programs, Compliance, Risk Management, Board Involvement, etc.

The key is to focus on measurable indicators of performance, rather than process oriented issues. Also, give appropriate levels of detail: not too much & not too little. Also, the benchmarks should be set at the time that goals are determined so management can quickly grasp which elements are working and which ones need more attention to support the the organization's needs and goals.

Check it out:

http://www.blueavocado.org/content/nonprofit-dashboard-and-signal-light-boards

Choosing the right email provider

Here's a helpful blog post from Heather Rast at Insights & Ingenuity about how to go about choosing the right bulk email provider when you are running a small or medium-sized shop. She also includes a list of helpful articles and resources for email marketing providers that should be very helpful for anyone looking to do email marketing for the first time.

Contact, Belief, Ability

A very helpful article by Kim Klein about identifying major donor prospects:

https://www.compasspoint.org/askgenie/details.php?id=53

In sum:

"You are looking for three things in each prospect:

• Evidence that the prospect is connected with someone in your organization,
  so that you can establish contact.
  
• Evidence that the person believes in your cause (or a similar cause), which
  includes evidence that the person gives money to similar organizations.
  
• Evidence that the person has the ability to make the size gift you
  want."