New Years, New Resolutions, New Studies to Help You Out

Several studies have been released lately that should be useful to philanthropy professionals.  Three of interest:

The Non Profit Research Collaborative:  November Fundraising Survey  This is a collaboration groups including the AFP, Foundation Center, and National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS).  The news was neither terrible nor wonderful.  Here is one piece of news:  larger organizations seem to be fairing the best.  Why is that?  Are they able to afford to maintain a presence in donors' lives? Are they considered a safer investment? 

A second report is the Online Giving Study by Network for Good, True Sense Marketing and sponsored by AOL.  While it clearly serves the company's purposes, it offers some interesting data that they kindly shared with the rest of us.  It's clear that donors give more when they give through an organization's branded site versus via social media or a generic giving page.  The challenge is to engage donors in a more intimate and emotionally coherent way. Unfortunately the report doesn't offer many ideas about how an organization can foster that engagement.

Finally, as the link on the end l start offers, here is a link to the new IRS Report on 2010 and 2011.  Thank you GuideStar for getting that information out to all of us.  More scrutiny is coming along with a fairly dramatic increase in staying in the IRS to pursue non-profits.