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Archive for October, 2009
Give and Take: Employee Guidelines for Using Social Networks, Plus More
Oct 21st
Technical problems prevented the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s iParticipate public-service campaign from meeting expectations on its first day, a blog writer for the recruitment site VolunteerMatch writes, as noted in The Chronicle’s Give and Take review of the best nonprofit blogs.
Plus:
- Advice on drawing up employee guidelines for how to use online social networks.
- A call for nonprofit employees who grew up in tough economic conditions to speak up about what they have learned.
- New thoughts about the potential of online giving.
- Are Generation Y nonprofit workers smarter than entry-level people during previous decades?
Also: Join The Chronicle’s live blog to tell us what you’re watching during this TV volunteerism week — and discuss how this effort is affecting the nonprofit world.
Prospecting: A Fund-Raising Guinness World Record
Oct 21st
An effort to raise money for four cancer charities on the social-networking sites Twitter and Facebook has set a Guinness World Record, notes The Chronicle’s Prospecting, column.
Plus: How charities can learn how to exceed donors’ expectations.
Business Giving vs Individual Giving
Oct 21st
There are a lot of new and brilliant creative and philanthropic successes in the world of business giving. Social enterprise is happening all around us doing tremendous good; Cause marketing is making us think differently about the products we purchase and the partnerships we create with businesses. I’ve been excited to see some businesses think creatively about their use of social media in connection with nonprofits. Aflac and Audi just finished Facebook causes campaigns using a matching sponsorship to raise awareness for their business and fundraise for a nonprofit?
With the exception of a few large gifts that typically have a marketing or business plan attached to them, businesses typically do not give as significantly as individuals. From my experience individuals and families are more consistently willing and able to give gifts at that level and higher. Business giving is important and a key component to a successful fundraising plan. Businesses think in terms of customers and marketing they want recognition and community impact more than traditional philanthropy. Family owned businesses can be very different as they often represent the giving of the family that runs the business.
Related posts:
- Starting a Business Program- PART 1
- Starting a Business Program- PART 2
- Event & Campaign Sponsorship Levels- Part 2
- Embedded Philanthropy: A New Age of Giving
- Monthly Giving
Online Discussion This Week: Insights From Donors
Oct 21st
Join us for a live online discussion Thursday, October 22, at noon U.S. Eastern time, with noteworthy philanthropists about what motivates people to give the majority of their fortunes to charity.
The talk is being organized with help from Bolder Giving, an organization that works to encourage affluent people to increase their donations significantly.
The Chronicle’s online discussions are free and open to everyone. People who ask questions in advance have a better chance of getting answers.
WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release
Oct 20th
As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible.
The headline changes in this release are:
- A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
- Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
- Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
- Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.
We would recommend that all sites are upgraded to this new version of WordPress to ensure that you have the best available protection.
If you think your site may have been hit by one of the recent exploits and you would like to make sure that you have cleared out all traces of the exploit then we would recommend that you take a look at the WordPress Exploit Scanner. This is a plugin which searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames. You can read more about this plugin here – “WordPress Exploit Scanner“
D.C. Government to Probe AIDS Charities’ Spending
Oct 20th
Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said Monday that the city will scrutinize local AIDS organizations’ spending of city money, The Washington Post reports.
The announcement follows the weekend publication of a Post series that reported that the city Health Department’s HIV/AIDS Administration awarded $25-million between 2004 and 2008 to nonprofit groups with few clients, poor record keeping, or questionable leadership.
Mr. Fenty said the city is no longer doing businesses with many of the most suspect groups, but he added, “We probably did not move fast enough to get at some of those inexcusable management deficiencies.”
(Free registration is required to view these articles.)
Del. Diocese Files for Bankruptcy, Delaying Abuse Trials
Oct 20th
The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Del., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection October 18, one day before the scheduled start of a series of civil trials over sex-abuse allegations against a former priest, reports the Associated Press.
The diocese, which serves some 230,000 Catholics in Delaware and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, has paid out about $6.2-million to settle abuse suits since 2002. Bishop W. Francis Malooly wrote on the diocese’s Web site that bankruptcy proceedings present “the best opportunity, given finite resources, to provide the fairest possible treatment” to abuse victims.
The diocese’s action automatically delayed the opening of the first of eight scheduled trials involving abuse claims against Francis DeLuca, a former priest. Thomas Neuberger, a lawyer representing 88 alleged victims, called the filing “a desperate effort” by the diocese to keep evidence of its responsibility for the abuse from being aired in court.
(Free registration is required to view this article on the Washington Post site.)
Mining Billionaire to Start China’s Biggest Philanthropy
Oct 20th
A Chinese mining magnate is starting the country’s largest philanthropic foundation, People’s Daily Online writes, citing a report in the Chinese-language China Economic Weekly.
Chen Fashu, president of Newhuadu Industrial Group, will put 90 percent of his shares in the firm, worth about $1.17-billion, toward an organization that will follow the operational model of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with an independent management team.
Dwindling Donations Force Layoffs at Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Oct 20th
Mothers Against Drunk Driving will reduce its staff size at its national office and 11 state branches in the face of a 20-percent drop in revenue, reports the Associated Press.
Affiliates of the charity in Arkansas, California, Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia will be affected. Private giving, government grants, and corporate sponsorships to the national group declined to $47-million last year.
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