NonProfit News That Matters

Welcome to our NonProfit News That Matters Blog.  Here at Goettler Associates, we are continuously watching developments in the philanthropic marketplace, reviewing new research studies, reading trade publications, and scouring industry blogs. The quantity of available information is a little overwhelming at times, so we though we’d help our friends and colleagues along by sharing the NonProfit News That Matters most.

Let us know what you think, join the conversation.


Category: Research & Special Reports

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Reported Uptick in Giving Shows Resilience of US Donors Despite Impact of Covid-19

Category: News & Information
And now for some good news. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s (FEP) 2nd Quarter 2020 report shows an uptick in giving and the resilience of givers in the US. As with previous economic downturns and cataclysms, we can see that the philanthropic spirit of the American public has endured through the second quarter of 2020. Fundraising ...

Covid-19 Impacts Giving in 1st Quarter

Category: News & Information
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project's (FEP) 1st Quarter 2020 report indicates a decrease in total current giving to nonprofits through March, 2020. Giving USA's recent webinars heralding an increase in total giving in 2019 may be less instructive than the FEP's more timely reporting and there may be disturbing trends developing for total giving...

Are you tracking donor retention rates?

Category: News & Information
We are proud of Lori H. Overmyer, Executive Vice President, and her continued leadership with the AFP Research Council and the ongoing (FEP) Fundraising Effectiveness Project.  If you are not monitoring your organization's donor retention rates you should be.  Creating donor communication and stewardship programs to increase your donor retention ...

AFP Compensation Survey

Category: News & Information
Advancing Philanthropy | Volume 25/ Number 3 / www.afpnet.org By Lori Hunter Overmyer, MBA, CFRE, Executive Vice President, GoettlerAssociates   The Association of Fundraising Professionals' annual compensation and benefits study, based thisyear on the input of 3,536 respondents (3,037 from the United States and 499 from Canada), provides...

Making the ASK Online Is Different.

Category: News & Information
  All fundraising is not the same.  How you "ask" and what you "ask for" appears to be different based on how you do the "asking."  This article from Jon Powell at NextAfter describes the importance of organizing the "ask" in your online donation form.  As major-gift fundraisers, we believe that the greatest sin is not to make the ...

Fundraising Effectiveness Project – 2017 Survey Report

Category: Research & Special Reports
The 2017 Fundraising Effectiveness Project Survey Report summarized data from 10,829 non-profit organizations covering year to year fundraising results for 2015-2016. Get the full report here: 2017 FUNDRAISING EFFECTIVENESS SURVEY REPORT Here is a quick outline of just some of the findings: Participating organizations raised $9.129 billion ...

What Do People Want When They Give to Nonprofits?

Category: News & Information
Oh my, what an enticing title!  This article from FastCompany certainly caught our eye, as we suspect it would for most development and fundraising professionals.  Despite being a little put-off by the author's recounting of  a few recent and high profile bad apples in the third sector, we worked through the article and the actual report.  Both...

Will a rising tide help your organization?

Category: News & Information
Great news!  New study predicts fundraising stability for 2017 and beyond.  Certainly a favorable environment for fundraising is a welcome change from the environment that many organizations have experienced over parts of the past decade.  But, as development professionals, we all know that a broad market prediction such as this actually means l...

Use the 2016 U.S. Trust Study to Encourage Your Volunteers

Category: News & Information
This year's report findings should help to further encourage the fundraising advocacy of your volunteers.  If you could show a current or prospective volunteer information that illustrates the likelihood their efforts will be rewarded with success, would you use it?  The sixth bi-annual U.S. Trust (IU Lily School of Philanthropy) study of high ne...

Focus on Donor Retention Rates to Develop Your S.M.A.R.T. Plan

Category: News & Information
This recent article and research conducted by Heather Yandow at Third Space Studio reminds us all that there are few short cuts in the business of philanthropy. We dove into this article because it called for the need to measure donor retention rates. Donor retention seems to be getting a great deal of attention in our industry today, and for good ...

Your Mission? Inspiring Donors!

Category: News & Information
A recent Gallup poll reminds nonprofit executives and development professionals, once again, of the importance of a strong, meaningful mission and brand.  This Gallup research reveals that donors give to organization whose mission aligns with their personal interests and beliefs.  Donors also want to give to trustworthy organizations, with sol...

Getting to Know Why Donors Give

Category: News & Information
A recent article by Michael J. Rosen explores why donors give, according to the results of a survey conducted by Abila, a provider of services and software for non-profits. Donors are obviously important to non-profit organizations, but a disconnect can exist between how donors actually interact with the organizations that they support and how sa...

Newsflash: Capital Campaigns Raise More Money

Category: News & Information
As reported in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a recent study by the Nonprofit Research Collaborative reports that in 2015 capital campaigns helped to drive bigger revenues, and that two-thirds of those organizations that were in a capital campaign reported that giving was up.  What did you say?  This isn't really shocking news!  No, it's not sur...

Just Ask – You’ll be More Successful than You Think

Category: News & Information
Results of this research reported in the Harvard Business Review support many of the age-old axioms of successful fundraising.  Sharing this article with board members and volunteer fundraisers at your next orientation or training meeting may prove to be very effective.  Too often, volunteer fundraisers are overly fixated on objections and failur...

How are organizations working with donor advised funds?

Category: News & Information
Donor-Advised Funds continue to grow in popularity and growth.  We recently noted this trend here as well.  Is Fidelity, which is but one option for the donor advised fund, really doing a better job promoting the tax-wise benefits of giving than all of our nation's community foundations and individual charities?  What are they offering the donor...

More changes for Nonprofit Financial Statements

Category: News & Information
Just when everyone got comfortable with nonprofit financial statements, and conditional and unconditional promises to give (instead of pledges) it appears as though there may be more changes ahead.  Granted, the new accounting rules proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board is more technical than most development professionals delve int...

Do We Need to Schedule That Meeting?

Category: News & Information
This research into the human toll of too many meetings is a real eye-opener.  If it's one thing development officers do -- it's meetings!  Meetings with volunteers, donors, committee chairs, colleagues, and department heads, etc.  While most development officers do not work in organizational structures this large, we could all benefi...

Useful Study Identifies that Donors Have Unique Needs

Category: News & Information
This article from NPQ (Non Profit Quarterly) reminds development professionals, once again, that each donor to our organizations is unique.  They have unique perspectives and unique needs.  This research is helpful in further defining and understanding evolving preferences of broad ranges of constituents. Useful Study Reveals Generational Differe...

More predictions about future giving . . . who should we believe?

Category: News & Information
More predictions about future giving trends have been released, and it differs greatly from another recent industry forecast.  Giving USA and the Lilly School have released a very encouraging and optimistic view of the road ahead in 2015 and 2016.  For anyone who has been watching the interactions between Giving USA and The Atlas of Giving, this ...

Unlocking the Key to Male Donors

Category: News & Information
Anytime we see new and careful research in the industry, it is certainly worth taking a look, especially if it informs the key to male donors.  Upon further reflection, and actually reading the research, it does not appear as though the key to unlocking donor generosity has yet been found.  To be sure, making any generalized and broad statement a...

Record Giving in 2014. 2015 Outlook Bleak.

Category: News & Information
Few industry insiders will argue that 2014 was a record giving year, as this report clearly identifies. The good folks at Atlas of Giving have come out with their 2014 annual report.  Some may remember this group from their dust up with Giving USA about a year ago.  We're not picking sides on which enterprise employs the best method.  But we do ...

What the Latest Research Says About Getting People to Give

Category: News & Information
This recent article posted at the Wall Street Journal Markets site, seems to contradict the recent industry trend of forgoing the annual report listing an organization's donors.  While the tradition of publicly displaying a list of donors has been with us since our colonial days, this article suggests taking a more strategic approach to donor re...

2014 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Individuals

Category: News & Information
Encouraging news on high net worth individuals from the ongoing U.S. Trust /  Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy Survey.  Giving is up!  The overall findings seem to once again support several essential best practices, such as:  volunteers give more than non-volunteers; the more involved and engaged individuals are the large...

Donor Advised Funds Now 3 of Top 10 Biggest Charities

Category: News & Information
The numbers don't lie. The three largest donor advised funds now rank as three of the top ten largest charities in the nation.  Some may argue that  these organizations are not truly charitable organizations, and in fact the contributed funds will move along to other organizations in due course.  But, what does the latest Philanthropy 400 list f...

Enhance the donor experience

Category: Marketing & Communications
Satisfied customers make repeat customers.  So too, satisfied donors make repeat donors.  This article from GuideStar suggests that keeping your donors happy will depend more and more on the organization's online engagement.   The New Donor Engagement Reality: Bottom-Line Priorities for the Online Experience July 2014 Community...

Online fundraising is rapidly rising

Category: News & Information
It seems that everywhere we go these days, clients ask us about social media, crowdfunding, and the slew of other online communication and fundraising vehicles available.  The good folks at Nonprofit Tech for Good have posted a great collection of 14 recent stats that are quite insightful.  Clearly, every organization should be looking at ...

The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History

Category: LinkedIn Articles
The greatest wealth transfer in history will create extensive opportunities for nonprofit agencies, according to an in-depth study by the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College.  This potential and historic transfer of wealth has been a topic in the third sector for a good long while.  Continuing research on this topic should at t...

Encouraging Report of Online Donations

Category: LinkedIn Articles
An encouraging report of online donations at the nation's largest nonprofit organizations.  One group actually received a $1 million online gift.  Wow!  That will certainly skew their average gift analysis! =============================================================== THE CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY May 18, 2014 Online Fundraising Goes Mainstre...

How Older Adults Use Technology

Category: Research & Special Reports
How older adults use technology has been analyzed by The Pew Research Center.  It is always astounding to hear some nonprofit executives tell us that their organization had yet to commit to electronic communication because of the age of their donors.  These executives often suggest that seniors just don't use email, or they don't access the organ...

Digital Giving Index Update (InfoGraphic)

Category: Fund Raising
If you like InfoGraphcs, Newtwork for Good has a great new post on their blog that presents a very compelling story for organizations to focus on their digital giving strategy and resources.  Take a look, this might help a development officer make the case for investing additional resoruces . . . ============================================== Jus...

Has U.S. Charitable Giving Really Exploded?

Category: News & Information
This recent article in Forbes highlights the growing professionalism of the Third Sector.  In our view the debate is a good one to have, and is based on increasing competition and growing sophistication of the nonprofit sector.  As Mr. Watson points out, it is easy to focus on the brewing controversy of the big number of total charitable gifts...

Burk Releases New Donor Survey Report

Category: LinkedIn Articles
New Donor Survey Report: Penelope Burk and her Cygnus Applied Research, Inc. firm have released the next installment of their extensive and insightful research.  A free download of an executive summary of the report is available here. We've extracted a few key points from Penelope's research below that we found of particular interest: __________...

Reminding Fundraisers of the Donor’s Perspective

Category: LinkedIn Articles
A great post reminding fundraisers of the donor's perspective, and further supported by some shocking statistics from the AFP's Fundraising Effectiveness Project.  Go forth and broker love ! Stop Treating Your Donors Like a Cash Cow Meet the typical donor, as charities see the beast: a cash cow. Biddable. Milkable. And — oh, yes — mythical. B...

Charitable giving tied to state tax write-offs

Category: News & Information
By: Elaine S. Povich, Pew/Stateline staff writer States that have tinkered with one of the most sacrosanct of all tax write-offs – state income tax deductions and credits for charitable contributions – have seen their local charities suffer the backlash. Their decisions offer insight for other states and for federal officials who are contempla...

Donor-Advised Fund Growth Defies Giving Trends

Category: News & Information
Here is an article we found about donor-advised fund growth in the TIME Magazine Business Section.  This certainly appears to be good news about giving in the main stream media.  Hurrah. This article suggests that these individuals clearly understand the tax benefits of giving.  As fund-raising professionals we should be encouraged that donors ...

Finding the Next Million Dollar Gift

Category: News & Information
Interested in finding a million dollar gift to your nonprofit?  Here is a research report that might help.  When your organization moves its attention from pursuing unrestricted operating support toward funding for organizational and program growth, the importance of early pace-setting advance gifts will become an issue of vital importance.  Thi...

The Million Dollar List

Category: News & Information
The 2013 Giving USA Research report has been issued and as always is receiving a good bit of attention.  And, for good reason. The continuing research of Giving USA is a valuable tool for our profession and the philanthropic sector. Many development officers can quote the segmentation of donor types, or in other words, where the money comes fro...