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Category: Nonprofit Fundraising

Holiday Season 2018 to Test How Much Donors Are Motivated by Tax Deductions

Holiday Season 2018 to Test How Much Donors Are Motivated by Tax Deductions

End-of-year giving traditionally gives struggling nonprofits a way to make up for any lost ground and get a budgetary boost into the new year. Starting with Giving Tuesday (November 27 this year), the public is treated to, or annoyed by, a chorus of messages from needy nonprofits. Despite any annoyance, many generous people respond, such that approximately 30% of individual giving happens in December. We are weeks away, however, from what could be a seismic shift. The timing of holiday…

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How to Make Your Nonprofit’s Emails Stand Out on Days Like Giving Tuesday

How to Make Your Nonprofit’s Emails Stand Out on Days Like Giving Tuesday

Although it has been around only since 2012, Giving Tuesday (on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving) has become the established “opening day” for year-end online donations to nonprofit organizations. Last year (in 2015) for example, almost 700,000 online donors collectively gave over $116 million dollars to charitable causes, according to a report by ImpactLab. Suffice it to say that no nonprofit wants to be left out of the action. And judging from the number of emails in my inbox this morning…

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Trump Plan to Cap Itemized Deductions a Concern for Nonprofits

Trump Plan to Cap Itemized Deductions a Concern for Nonprofits

As has been widely reported, President-Elect Donald Trump’s plan to change the U.S. tax system includes placing a cap on itemized deductions–$100,000 for a single person, and $200,000 for a married couple. Sound like plenty to cover your deductions? (It sure is for mine.) But we all have cause for concern about the impact on U.S. nonprofit organizations, because charitable donations are on the list of potential U.S. tax deductions. Suddenly, the wealthiest of donors will have less incentive to give….

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Online Places to Do Holiday Shopping for a Cause

Online Places to Do Holiday Shopping for a Cause

A shout-out to Nonprofit Tech for Good for compiling a list of 30 Online Stores That Benefit Nonprofits, just in time for the start of the holiday shopping season. My family could have used this the year I announced (in classic Berkeley style) that I wanted to reduce consumerism and overconsumption by having us give and get only gifts from nonprofits that year. I think I confused them. I received things like shrunken wool sweaters from Goodwill. Perhaps, like many people I’ve…

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Hmm, Maybe a Scoreboard Wasn’t Quite What This Donor Thought He Was Funding

Hmm, Maybe a Scoreboard Wasn’t Quite What This Donor Thought He Was Funding

Here’s one you can file under, “Complying With the Letter of the Law Won’t Necessarily Keep You Out of Trouble.” The University of New Hampshire seems to have been, legally speaking, properly handling a testamentary donation when it used one fourth of the $4 million that thrifty library cataloguer Robert Morin saved and left to the college for–are you ready?–a football scoreboard. Mr. Morin had, it appears true, made a mostly unrestricted gift. By law, a nonprofit that receives such a gift must simply put…

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