JGA Blog

We are off and running into 2017!  After a fall that was focused on the US Presidential election, the 2016 year-end season of giving seemed like a wonderful opportunity to focus on helping others, thanking donors for their generosity, and looking ahead to 2017.

As I look ahead, I believe that these are the 3 philanthropic trends that will underpin our fundraising landscape in 2017:

1. Advocacy – As our nonprofits work with their newly elected officials, a focus on advocacy will emerge as more important than ever.  How do we communicate the role of advocacy to our donors and ask them to invest in advocacy? The Council of Nonprofits outlines the need for heightened advocacy and the

Thanksgiving is upon us. Is it possible that 2017 is already on the horizon? As we all know, there are twelve months in the year but, when it comes to fundraising, those twelve months are not equal. Is your organization ready for year end? Have you considered the implications of the presidential election upon the financial and philanthropic planning decisions that might be considered by your top donors and their advisors between now and December 31^st?

Year-end is prime time for charitable gifts from individuals

For most charitable organizations, the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve is by far the most significant in terms of gift transactions and gift revenue from individuals. Some organizations receive more than 40% of their annual gift revenue during this 5- or 6-week period. Many annual giving donors delay their charitable decision-making until the year-end period. For many

According to Giving USA 2016, total charitable giving in the United States grew by 4.1 percent to $373.25 billion in 2015. This marks the highest total amount given in the 40 years Giving USA has tracked this data, both in current dollars and adjusted for inflation.

A few weeks ago we looked at the implications for higher education and healthcare organizations from the Giving USA data. This week we will focus in on the faith-based sector and look at the implications of this latest data on giving to religion.

 What this Means for Religious Organizations:

Major gift donors are crucial for the ongoing sustainability of your nonprofit’s mission. In fact, high net worth donors often provide as much as 94% of the funds for nonprofit campaign initiatives. So, it is important that we understand their giving patterns, preferences, and motivations.

The 2016 U.S. Trust® Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy released this week is the sixth edition of the biennial study, researched by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and provides nonprofits with valuable insights on this important donor demographic. The report surveyed 1,435 U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more (excluding the value of their primary home) and/or an annual household income of $200,000 or more.

My colleagues and I at JGA have had occasion over more than two decades now at hundreds of nonprofits to watch presidents and CEOs in action. The unique skill – and a fundraising best practice – that always captures our attention almost more than anything else is the way that some of them engage their entire institutions in a vision for “what can be.”

I’ve recently observed several leaders who have quietly displayed remarkable ability to do this.

To be sure, there are so many different and additional roles for a president as to be nearly impossible to write them all down. But when a president leads and causes everyone to think about and then, in many different ways, to become part of a shared vision for the future, it is magical.

As we have had some time now to absorb the data on 2015 charitable giving provided by the release of the Giving USA 2016 report, we thought it would be helpful to look at the implications of the data for those fundraisers involved in higher education advancement.

I believe that your best donor prospects are already in your database. That’s not earth shattering news but many times we become fixated on bringing in new donors rather than focusing on donor cultivation for those who are already connected to us.

The Baby Boomer and Millennial generations are frequently top of mind in discussions and research into the generations and generational giving preferences, but what about the “in-betweens?” Given the buzz, particularly about Millennials, it may be easy to overlook a resource for significant current and future donor growth for your organization: Generation X.

Also known as Gen X, this group includes those born in the United States from 1964 to 1980. Gen Xers are sandwiched squarely between older Baby Boomers and younger Millennials and represented 20% of total giving in the U.S. in 2013.

Based on data compiled by Pew Research Center, notable characteristics of this generation include:

A common practice among nonprofit organizations -- the offering of naming opportunities to donors – is seemingly receiving increased scrutiny. In the past fifteen months, for example, The New York Times featured an op-ed article on revising the way tax law treats naming rights and The Wall Street Journal ran a story on how naming rights can go wrong, focusing on a legal battle over a gift made by country singer Garth Brooks.

As we begin a New Year, we reflect on the wonderful generosity of so many individuals, corporations, and foundations whose charitable giving in 2015 enriched and saved lives through the arts, education, healthcare, environment, human services, and religion.

In 2015, we learned that philanthropy had reached a new high, reaching $358.38 billion, a 7.1% increase in current dollars (5.4% in inflation-adjusted dollars). This is reported to be the fastest recovery on record for the