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SmartGiving News for December 2004

Post Photos of Your Cause on the SmartGiving Website

Registered nonprofits are invited to submit photos for posting on the SmartGiving site. Photos should depict or be representative of your cause but without identifying your cause either by name or logo.

Simply e-mail your jpg to info@smart-giving.com

Sharing Your Values with the Children in Your Life

For most donors, one of the most important aspects of their philanthropy is the opportunity to transmit their values to the next generation. This is especially true where young children are concerned, whether those children are the children of the donor, their grandchildren, their nieces and nephews, or simply the children of friends. One of the best approaches we’ve seen is that of Moonjar (www.moonjar.com). Moonjar, a financial literacy toolkit teaching children to save, spend and share, was awarded the Global Learning Initiative Award at the 2004 Bologna Children's Book Fair. The 2004 Global Learning Initiative Award recognizes the most innovative educational product for children in grades K-12. At this time of year, when most American children are thinking about receiving, why not make your gift to them something that teaches them about giving, too.

What is Volunteering?

An AARP survey, Time and Money: an In-Depth Look at 45+ Volunteers and Donors, is one of the first studies to comprehensively examine volunteering and giving among the 45+ population, with over samples of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics.

It also provides a new definition of volunteering and giving based on adding behaviors not captured by traditional research questions in this area.

Some key findings include:

• Over eight in ten Americans 45 and older say they are involved in helping others without pay at some level – through an organization or on their own - based on the expanded assessment.
• The motivations to volunteer start with altruism, including a sense of responsibility to others, and a desire to make a difference. Also, Americans 45 and older are motivated by religious beliefs, and by the potential for some type of personal satisfaction or need.
• When questions measuring giving were expanded to include non-organizational donations such as money given to family and non-family individuals in need, almost nine in ten have made a donation in the past year. Giving follows similar patterns to volunteering, with fully 87% saying they have given to one effort or another in the last year.

A full report can be accessed at http://research.aarp.org/general/multic_2003.html

Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund Expects Giving To Remain Strong This Holiday Season

The Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, one of the nation’s largest public charities, today announced an increase in charitable giving for the first nine months of 2004, indicating that non-profit organizations could greatly benefit from increased giving this holiday season.

During this time, the Fund recorded a 13 percent increase in donor contributions. As part of the increase, grants to nonprofit organizations grew by six percent while the number of new Giving Accounts grew by 33 percent this year. Want more info?

Go to: http://www.charitablegift.org/history_news_2004_givingseason.shtml

Talking to Your Clients about Philanthropy: A message for professional advisors

GivingCapital, a firm that provides asset-based charitable giving solutions to financial services companies has published “Talking to Your Clients about Philanthropy: A message for professional advisors.” The article aims to help advisors meet the charitable giving needs of their clients first by engaging them in a discussion about giving and secondly by helping them to structure their gift. A pdf of the article can be downloaded at http://www.givingcapital.com/home.adp