On this last day of 2009, we offer Philanthropy Today readers a look at what news and ideas have been most popular this year, plus The Chronicle’s exclusive list of the biggest gifts of the year.

All of us at The Chronicle of Philanthropy send our readers good wishes for the 2010 year. We look forward to keeping you abreast of the most important news, ideas, and advice so that you can do your job better.

We’ll be back in your mailboxes on Monday with our regular summary of philanthropy news, including a look at articles that have appeared during our publishing break. And subscribers to The Chronicle will get a full issue online on January 11; the print issues will be sent on January 7.

In the meantime, we’ll be toasting all of our readers and the contributors to this site. Happy New Year!

As the crucial year-end giving season wraps up, charities have little to cheer about from the tally of giving by the nation’s wealthiest Americans. The 10 biggest gifts donated by Americans in 2009 totaled just $2.7-billion, according to a new Chronicle analysis, compared with $8-billion in 2008 and more than $4-billion in 2007.

Ruth Lilly, an heiress to the Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, died Wednesday at age 94, the Associated Press reports.

She ranked No. 2 on The Chronicle’s list of the biggest donors of the year when she announced plans in 2002 to give $520-million to charitable causes.

The gift attracted extra attention because $100-million of it went to Poetry magazine, which had less than $1-million in its endowment. In 2003 The Chronicle wrote about the challenges the gift posed to the newly rich organization, which had vaulted to No. 92 on the newspaper’s Philanthropy 400 list of the charities that raise the most from private sources.

And today the Chicago Tribune reported that the magazine has been roiled by controversy over how to spend Ms. Lilly’s money, which has grown to be worth $200-million since her original pledge.

The newspaper said that more half of the 12 trustees of a foundation that oversees the gift have resigned or said they were forced out because they criticized the organization’s leadership. Causing frustration among the trustees: a $25-million building the foundation created to serve as a poetry center — but that one trustee called a foundation’s “monument” to itself.

The newspaper said the state’s attorney general is reviewing questions about the organization’s fiscal practices, conflicts of interest, nepotism, and potential violations of nonprofit regulations.

Donald Marshall, chairman of the Poetry Foundation, told the newspaper that none of the allegations had any grounds and he was “mystified” why the former trustees had taken their concerns to state officials.

Officials in the attorney general’s office said they had not found any violations and that Ms. Lilly had left a broad mandate about how her pledge should be spent.

President Obama’s proposal to limit tax breaks for charitable gifts by wealthy people hasn’t gone anywhere, but an article on the furor over the plan was the most-popular news article on The Chronicle‘s Web site this year.

Read more about the articles that drew the largest number of readers.

A story about how a couple’s dance down the wedding aisle raised money for charity drew more viewers than any other article posted on The Chronicle’s fund-raising column this year.

You can read about the other topics that drew the most attention, plus see these items:

• Fifty-five professional athletes are vying to see who can attract the most money to benefit charity during the holiday season.

• How a charity benefits from engagement proposals and other special events.

News about the White House Office of Social Innovation — a new unit that focuses on spreading effective nonprofit projects — attracted the most attention from readers of The Chronicle’s Government and Politics Watch column.

Read more about the most popular items viewed by readers of the column.

A blog post about Michael Jackson’s philanthropy attracted more readers in 2009 than any other post on The Chronicle’s Give and Take blog, which rounds up the most interesting ideas in the nonprofit world daily.

Read more about the other ideas that garnered the most views.

The Chronicle is continuing to collect survey information on year-end fund-raising results to give everyone in the nonprofit world a better sense of how 2009 is concluding.

Please help us by participating in a quick online poll of organizations like yours.

We won’t name your charity in our reporting or ask for specific dollar amounts raised; our goal is simply to get a good understanding of how the economy is affecting this crucial period and provide a benchmark for groups to gauge their own results.

Please respond no later than Monday, January 4, 2010, at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

We know this is a busy time, so thank you very much for your help in these next few days.

You can read the results of our previous December fund-raising survey here.

If you have questions about the survey, please contact Chris Thompson, The Chronicle’s editorial-research director.

I am currently living in a catch 22 regarding meetings. If you meet too much, people will stop coming to your meetings and if you meet too little people will stop coming because they feel no accountability to the group. I believe it can be valuable to meet over the phone via conference call or in using email to help manage groups. It can also be valuable to connect over the phone 1-on-1 with group members throughout the week. But I don’t feel like that solves the meeting dilemma.

How do you handle the need to meet with your volunteers? What tricks do you use to keep your volunteers or board members in regular attendance?

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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