One in four nonprofit leaders is so disappointed in fundraising at his or her organization that the last person in the job was fired, according to a new national study to be released this week. And milder frustration is rampant: One in three executives is at best lukewarm about the person now holding the top development job.

But chief fundraisers have their own complaints about CEO’s, boards, and the support their organizations have given them. As a result, many of them are looking to leave their jobs—or possibly leave fundraising altogether, the survey found.

The study, one of the biggest national surveys of its kind, gathered data from more than 2,700 development directors and charity heads who work at organizations of different sizes and missions.

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The Lustgarten Foundation in Bethpage, New York, has announced grants totaling $25 million to advance pancreatic cancer research.

Grants were awarded to eighteen scientific and medical institutions working to develop and test early-detection methods and better therapeutic options. The recipients include Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

A portion of the grant funding will be used to advance several new clinical trials designed to detect pancreatic cancer earlier, which, because there are no early-detection tests for the disease at the moment, is a critical area of research. Another clinical trial will explore whether a revolutionary immunotherapy approach can be used to treat the disease.

Pancreatic cancer is the most lethal of all cancers, with only 6 percent of individuals diagnosed with the disease surviving five years. Since it was created in 1998, the Lustgarten Foundation has awarded more than $65 million in support of pancreatic cancer research.

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David Rockefeller Jr. smiled often, sipped white wine and mingled with patrons at his Sailors for the Sea charity dinner in New York last month.

Ticket sales and pledges exceeded his $500,000 goal before dinner was served at Christie’s auction house. By the time dessert arrived, a live and silent auction boosted the total raised to more than $750,000 for his ocean-conservation charity.

“What’s occurred in 2012 has been in the right direction,” Rockefeller said in an interview about the climate for giving. “People are feeling more comfortable, and giving isn’t cutting into the marrow of their net worth.”

Four years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. helped trigger the worst economic downturn in 80 years, many nonprofits in the U.S. are seeing an improvement in charitable giving. Donors are more comfortable writing checks. Fundraisers are working harder to increase their donor base and tap existing patrons.

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Abstract

This article describes how charities are regulated in Panama. Charitable institutions which benefit the community are granted special tax benefits. For entities receiving these benefits, reporting is substantial, which involves complying with local regulations, as charities may be entrusted with public funds. Private foundations and trusts, however, serve as alternatives for charitable endeavours which do not require special tax assistance.

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Abstract

The paper analyses fundraising events, in terms of the motivations for supporting an event, the costs and income streams and the efficiency of events. Events vary from sponsored bike rides to fashion shows to annual balls but all events share one defining attribute, the participant or attendee gains some private benefit, be it a sense of personal achievement, an opportunity to show their generosity or simply having fun. The fact that the participants are supporting the charity may come secondary to the private benefit they gain from attending the event. Fundraising events therefore provide a means for charities to broaden their donor bases beyond those whose only motivation to support the charity is their fundamental belief in the particular charity’s cause.

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Abstract

This article presents and discusses the findings of a survey conducted among Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in most of the twenty-seven countries within the European Union, which studied the extent and success of fundraising from philanthropic sources for research. Our data demonstrate that success in fundraising is related to institutional privilege (in terms of the universities’ reputation, wealth and networks) as well as factors relating to the internal organization, activities and cultures of universities (such as the extent of investment in fundraising activities) and factors relating to the external social, economic and political environments (such as national cultural attitudes towards philanthropy and the existence of tax breaks for charitable giving). Our findings identify the existence of a ‘Matthew effect’, such that privilege begets privilege, when it comes to successful fundraising for university research. We argue that, despite the existence of some untapped philanthropic potential, not all universities are equally endowed with the same fundraising capacities. The article concludes by suggesting that policy-makers pay more heed to the structural constraints within which fundraising takes place, to ensure that policies that seek to promote philanthropy are realistic.

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Abstract

This study investigates three independent variables; types of service failure, service expectations, and attribution on postfailure responses in healthcare. A between-subjects 3?×?2?×?2 experimental design using written scenarios was used. The findings demonstrate that customer responses to service failures in hospitals are extensively influenced by the type of service failure, the level of service expectation of the provider, and, to a lesser extent, the controllability of the cause of the failure. Core service failures lead to greater increases in negative responses for satisfaction, emotional, and behavioral responses than supplementary service failure with high service expectations protecting the provider against overall dissatisfaction, negative word-of-mouth, and switching behaviors. Interestingly, perceived high controllability leads to greater dissatisfaction but not to increased negative emotional or behavioral responses. The study applies attribution theory to explain the results. The article concludes with managerial implications.

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Abstract

Research was conducted in order to define a “buyer behavior” process for the purchase of sponsorship at a corporate level. A series of interviews was carried out with a number of organizations that are currently involved in sponsorship of varying kinds. A consideration was made to include a balance of sponsorship types—small and large—as well as arts, sports, and events, although no attempt was made to identify how the process differs across sponsorship type. Our results show that while sponsorship and fundraising are flipsides of the same coin from the nonprofit sponsorship-seeker’s perspective, the sponsorship provider sees the act of sponsorship as a commercial profit-making venture. This is a conundrum that has wide-reaching consequences for the sector.

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Abstract

Organizational scholarship has increasingly focused its attention to how nonprofit, for-profit, and government agencies develop their unique organizational identity through their strategic communication efforts. As social media continues to become more prominent in communication campaigns due to the high levels of public usage and public involvement with organizations on social media sites, it is important to examine these social media messages as they relate to organizational identity. YouTube videos increasingly are being used by organizations to educate and inform just as much as they are to entertain. Through a content analysis of the most viewed videos on the top 100 official nonprofit YouTube channels, this study found that nonprofit organizations primarily use their YouTube videos to inform and educate viewers about their missions, programs, and services. While the videos also occasionally discuss the organizations’ advocacy, volunteering, and fundraising efforts, nonprofit organizations were not living up to their potential in terms of engagement through direct appeals for involvement. Additionally, the organizations were more likely to use outsiders’ words and stories to build the videos’ narratives rather than using internal stakeholders. The benchmark numbers provided by this study reiterate key rules that are stressed in practitioner-oriented work on video production for branding and identity-building efforts.

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Abstract

International charity is often subject to moral hazard and adverse selection problems. We show that the burden of informational asymmetries are borne by the most needy countries, even when charities design incentive contracts which limit the rents that some countries can extract.

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