Software Company Offers New Fund-Raising Tool
The software company Convio is introducing a new online product, Common Ground, designed to help charities manage their interactions with donors and other supporters. With the introduction of Common Ground, the Austin, Tex., company is attempting to break into a segment of the nonprofit software…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Web Site Gives Donors Customized List of Charities
A new Web site enables individual donors to get a customized list of charities that match their interests. Created by the Berkeley Center for New Media at the University of California, the Donation Dashboard site works by using software similar to what Amazon.com and other commercial sites use to…
By Holly Hall
Contributor
Interactive Timeline Tells Charity’s 50-Year History
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Education Development Center, in Newton, Mass., has created an interactive timeline that draws on photography, audio, and video to tell the story of its work in education and health promotion. The organization has focused much of its energy on curriculum…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Contest Seeks Applicants in Creative Technology
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in Chicago, is expanding its Digital Media and Learning Competition. The foundation will again provide $30,000 to $250,000 to innovative projects that demonstrate the use of technology to encourage participatory learning in which people share…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
New Mapping Tool Details Local Conditions
Nonprofit groups can use a new online service, PolicyMap, to create maps that show important crime, demographic, education, employment, health, and housing information about the neighborhoods in which they work. “We have loaded in almost 4,000 indicators, or pieces of information, that you can put…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Rapid Response Pays Off, Consulting Group Finds
When people sign up to receive online newsletters and other information from a charity, they usually get little more than an acknowledgment from the organization for at least a month. Cutting that lag time can produce fund-raising benefits for nonprofit groups, according to a new background paper…
By Holly Hall
Contributor
Bits: Mal Warwick Associates To Acquire Donordigital
Mal Warwick Associates, a fund-raising consulting company in Berkeley, Calif., has announced that it intends to acquire Donordigital, a consulting company in San Francisco that specializes in online fund raising. For more information: Go to http://www.malwarwick.com or http://www.donordigital.com.…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Pop-Up Box Prompts Donors to Share Views
A simple pop-up box has given the University of Pennsylvania a window into the minds of its online donors. After donors make an Internet gift to the university’s annual fund, a screen comes up with their receipt, along with a pop-up box that asks if they would like to say why they made their…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Web Site Seeks ‘Filmanthropists’
SnagFilms, a new Web site that gives viewers free access to full-length documentaries online, offers a new distribution method for filmmakers whose work often languishes beyond the reach of moviegoers — and gives film buffs another way to support causes highlighted in documentaries. The site, which…
By CANDIE JONES
Contributor
Bits: eBay Giving Works Passes $150-Million Mark
United Way of America has sold its employee-giving campaign software, United eWay, to CreateHope, an online-giving company in Washington, to start a new company, Truist. United Way will be the largest shareholder. For more information: Go to http://www.truist.com. eBay Giving Works, a program that…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Microsoft Site Offers Donation Guidelines
NGO Connection, a new Web site created by the Microsoft Corporation, brings together information about the company’s grant making and software-donation program with case studies that show how nonprofit organizations have used technology to improve their operations. The site is scheduled to be…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Baseball Appeals Test Donations by Text Message
Baseball fans with mobile phones who watched the Washington Nationals play the Houston Astros last week were invited to support Children’s National Medical Center’s work to fight pediatric diabetes by sending a text message to make an instant $5 donation, which was then charged to their…
By CANDIE JONES
Contributor
Effort Links Charities With News-Media Sites
A new Internet service, Good2gether, seeks to connect people and causes by distributing nonprofit information to high-traffic Web sites, such as those run by newspapers and television stations. Information from the service currently appears on The Boston Globe’s Web site, Boston.com. Nonprofit…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Ford Foundation Official Warns About Dangers of Alternative Investments
As endowments increase their allocations to alternative assets, skeptics have generally focused on two risks of such investments: their high fees, which eat into returns, and their tendency to use lots of debt, which can spell disaster when investments drop sharply. Now an investing expert at the…
By Ben Gose
Senior Editor
Mich. Hospital Offers Online Wish List to Donors
An online effort to assist entrepreneurs in developing countries served as inspiration when a hospital foundation in Grand Rapids, Mich., decided to expand its Internet fund raising. Officials at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital and Spectrum Health Foundations say they looked to the successful…
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Ex-Supreme Court Justice Promotes Game Project
Sandra Day O’Connor does not play video games. But she believes in their potential. In her keynote speech at the Games for Change conference in New York this month, the retired Supreme Court justice discussed her latest project, Our Courts, an online interactive digital game and civics curriculum…
By Alison Stein Wellner
Contributor