It’s certainly not the only service of its type, but the relatively new Crowdwise.com — founded in part by actor Ed Norton — was profiled in Sunday’s New York Times.   He and his partners do seem to have at least a basic grasp on individual fundraising:

He knows that a majority of people who now donate to charity don’t do so online; they write checks. But he and his partners contend that Crowdrise, with its mix of edginess, silliness and good-humored competition, can change that habit, especially for young people.

But the important thing is that the focus here — with its ability for donors to have personal pages — is on the viral potential of philanthropy.  The article is a quick and interesting read.

The Executive Director will work as part of a team of 25 Development and Outreach professionals. The position reports directly to Mary Kay Phelps, the Senior Vice President of Development and manages a staff of 3, as well as a number of key vendor relationships.

More details about this great opportunity are in the Careers section of WETA’s website.

As part of the conference, we’ll also be hosting a “High Tea” on Monday the 28th at 2:00pm at the Morrison  Clark Inn, 1015 L Street NW — just steps from the Convention Center.  Not only will we be serving free sandwiches and sweets but we’ll also be discussing and demonstrating how individual giving can build reliable revenues for your library for years to come.

Please RSVP for our “High Tea” by clicking here.

The McKinsey PowerPoint is an interesting one to go through.  More ominous for our business is their suggestion on page 20 to “increase prices on select products to cover costs,” including of course, Nonprofit Mail.

Other things they point out (in addition to the well-known story of decreasing volume and increasing costs) include the USPS’s 36,500 retail locations which is more than twice as many as McDonald’s and more than three times the number of Starbucks.  While this is interesting, what might be a more apt comparison would be with FedEx Office locations (about 1,600 — worldwide) or UPS Stores (about 1,300, also worldwide).

On a similar note, the report also takes a dim view on privatization as an option.  Of course, no one would want to acquire a business with such a bad model, onerous legal requirements and workforce costs and obligations.  However, in my opinion, the two competitors mentioned above would certainly be happy to fill the void if they were simply legally allowed to deposit their mail in anyone’s mail box, especially in bulk and business mail.  But they can’t as it stands right now.

In the end, even with all of McKinsey’s price-increase and service-reduction focused suggestions, the USPS will still face a $115 billion loss.  At some point after all those options are exhausted, what it comes down to is their last comment: “Legislative and regulatory changes are necessary and will require cooperation from multiple stakeholders.” Mailers will have to endure many storms over the next few years before the USPS problem is resolved (if ever).

While it is a compelling storyline that younger people are giving, especially since — as Vinay says — non-profits have already “optimized fundraising with seniors,” what would be of more interest to me is how long these people will stick around.  Organizations’ experience with past disaster relief donors are that the vast majority are new donors and that they have been very difficult to renew.  This was certainly the case with the tsunami donors I mentioned in the last post.

How much luck will the Red Cross and other organizations have in cultivating and developing a connection to this huge group of donors who cared more about this one particular campaign than the organization itself?  How much should they even try?  Maybe they should just accept the fleeting nature of these short-attention span one-time donors and take the money and run, instead of wasting more money trying to grow a relationship that really never existed.

My first reaction when it was happened was that this was the tipping point for this not-so-new way to give.  Popular in Europe and Asia for a while, mobile giving never really caught on in the US until now.  Usually blamed were hesitant service providers and other infrastructure issues.

But there were important cultural factors too.  Simply put, new giving technologies have consistently followed the same pattern for the last few years: a channel finally makes it big when it’s used by one of two (preferably both) specific sectors: political and disaster relief.

This was perfectly illustrated by internet giving itself.  I was working for GetActive (now part of Convio) during the Asian Tsunami.  It was amazing to see the money pour in online to Save the Children, Oxfam, Care and similar organizations that weekend.  Roll back a few months and Howard Dean was having unprecedented success raising money online for his presidental campaign.

Online had been a growing source of revenue by then, of course, but it didn’t really take off until those two events.  And it still took a while to trickle down to social service, educational and arts and cultural groups (even today, we see those sectors raising a lower portion of their funds online than the more activist sectors).

This is exactly the path that mobile philanthropy is taking.   Issue groups and candidates have had some success communicating with their supporters via text message.  And now disaster relief has paved the way for fundraising too.  It remains to be seen how long it will take for this form of giving to trickle down to your local PBS station or library.

However, those fine sentiments aren’t translating into the same gifts they might have just a few years ago.

The survey found that among those with $5 million or more, less than 1% made gifts of $1 million or more last year. That is down from 15% in 2007. Instead, more of them are making smaller gifts. Nearly a third made gifts of $25,000 to $100,000, compared with 18% giving at that level in 2007.

That drives home once again how important an individual giving program is — acquiring and cultivating lower-level donors.  Not only are those donors less inclined to decrease their gifts during a down economy ($50 isn’t $500,000 after all) thereby providing a solid backbone to any giving program, but they are also the group from which future major donors, planned givers and event attendees will come — replacing the current donors as they fall off for any of many reasons.

Also interesting are the commenters, who back-up one of the assertions of the PNC report; that donors are now more “mission-driven” and want to “know that [their] money is being efficiently spent.”  Also, one questions whether the Federal government’s new tax policies on donations will result in a decrease in giving.  Something we’ve asked about here before.

More from Fox News.

Although he didn’t know it at the time, young Carl Bloom (click on photo at right to view full size) had already started his direct marketing career while on strike with his family against the Western Union Telegraph Company. Back then he was telling people to “write” instead of “wire” in this Daily News photo.

While sending a telegram is now obsolete (even though Carl can’t take all the credit), Carl Bloom Associates now specializes in Integrated Marketing using every available communications channel to talk to your members and supporters – including email, the Internet, telemarketing and, yes, even writing a letter.

For a fresh look at how your organization could improve acquisition and retention of its individual donors, give us a call at 914-468-8942 or send an email to partnership@carlbloom.com.

But now, it’s back.  According to the Office of Management and Budget, here’s how it works:

Currently, if a middle-class family donates a dollar to its favorite charity or spends a dollar on mortgage interest, it gets a 15-cent tax deduction, but a millionaire who does the same enjoys a deduction that is more than twice as generous.

And to be fair, an opposite view for one of the commenters:

Here’s the real way it works. A dollar spent on mortgage interest or a charitable donation is currently not taxed. That means if you are in the 15% tax bracket, you don’t pay the 15 cents on that dollar. And if you are in the 35% tax bracket, you don’t pay the 35 cents. In other words, both the person in the 15% bracket and the person in the 35% bracket get to use the full $1 of their own money for mortgage interest or charity. [Emphasis, their own.]

The only “disparity” is between the tax rates charged on the middle-class and wealthier individuals.

Ben Smith expects “the same fierce pushback to the write-off change — and the same assumption on the Hill that it’s dead on arrival — as last year.”