Campaign Brings $91 Million To SDSU

San Diego State University (SDSU) just had the most successful fundraising campaign in the school's 116-year history.

The institution announced Thursday that its annual Campaign for SDSU bought in more than $91 million during the 2012-2013 fiscal year, which ended June 30. Overall, the campaign has reached $413.8 million of its $500 million goal.

“We are grateful to our generous alumni and community supporters whose gifts continue to fuel our development as a leading public research university,” said SDSU President Elliot Hirshman. “This record breaking year is a critical milestone in the development of our culture of philanthropy.”

During 2012-2013, SDSU raised nearly $58 million for student scholarships, endowed professorships, and program support. These gifts will enhance the broad institutional goals set forth in “Building on Excellence,” SDSU’s new strategic plan, which builds upon SDSU’s areas of strength and pride: student success, research and creative endeavors and community and communication.

Some of the more notable gifts from this year's campaign include:

• A gift of $3 million from Charles and Chinyeh Hostler to support international programs in the College of Arts and Letters;
• A gift of $1.5 million from the Campanile Foundation board member Terry Atkinson to establish an endowment that will strengthen SDSU’s ambitious research agenda by supporting faculty research; and,
• A $1.5 million endowment from the late Professor Emeritus Donald G Wilson for the College of Engineering.

The Campaign for SDSU, the first campus-wide fundraising event in the school's history, was launched in 2007 as a way to provide new opportunities for students. To date, The Campaign has received more than 43,000 gifts from alumni, friends, faculty, staff, parents and community partners, including 78 gifts of $1 million or more.

You can find more information about the campaign at http://campaign.sdsu.edu/campaign/ 

Free Webinar: #GivingTuesday in July: Get Ready for December Now!

Update: Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday's webinar! It was a blast. If you missed the event for any reason, you can see it in its entirety here

Online giving is one of the more popular methods of fundraising these days, and last year's debut of the Twitter-based campaign #GivingTuesday was just another example of the power of fundraising on the Internet. Although the campaign won't be starting again until December, your organization can still make preparations for it now.

Join The NonProfit Times and Salsa Labs for a FREE webinar on July 24th: "#GivingTuesday in July: Get Ready for December Now!" Henry Timms, founder of #GivingTuesday, and Christine Schaefer, VP Community and Marketing, Salsa, will discuss how your organization can use #GivingTuesday (which begins on December 3rd), as part of a wider online and offline campaign to help increase your end-of-year funding. We’ll offer tips for building your campaign and share insights from other non-profits who got a boost thanks to their #GivingTuesday participation last year.

Organizations should know that end-of-year fundraising doesn't just happen when the calendar flips to December; it takes months of planning including building lists and cultivating donors. That's why every fundraiser and nonprofit manager should attend this webinar so they are prepared when December 3rd rolls around. Register today!

NY Archdiocese To Let Nonprofit Run Struggling Catholic Schools

In an effort to save six struggling Catholic schools, the Archdiocese of New York has contracted an education nonprofit to run them this fall.

According to a report in The New York Daily News, the Partnership for Inner-City Education (PICE) -- which already has a history of working with Catholic schools -- will take over the finances and oversee the curriculum of the cash-strapped schools, located in the Bronx and Harlem. It marks the first time an independent organization has taken control of a NY parochial school.

“We want to have full enrollment and sustainability for the very long term,” Jill Kafka, executive director of PICE, said according to the report. “We’re really looking to have these schools alive for a long time.”

The six schools are:

• Mt Carmel-Holy Rosary, Our Lady Queen of Angels and St. Mark the Evangelist (Harlem) 
• St. Athanasius, Immaculate Conception (151st Street) and Sacred Heart (South Bronx)

PICE plans to allocate $9 million over the next five years to repair the building of the schools classroom materials, professional development for teachers, enrichment programs and other resources. The archdiocese will continue to oversee religious instruction and will retain ownership of the buildings.

In an announcement on the nonprofit's website, the following goals were laid out in regards to the group's plans for the schools:

• Provide low-income students with the academic preparation, values and life skills they will need to be successful throughout their lives. 
• Develop Catholic schools that are strong operationally and financially by maximizing enrollment, improving efficiency, rationalizing increased costs, and stabilizing revenue sources.

You can read the full story in The NY Daily News.

Queens Nonprofit Head Pleads Guilty To Stealing Funds

The head of a nonprofit youth camp in Queens, N.Y. pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds allocated by state lawmakers.

Van Holmes, president of the Young Leaders Institute Inc., was arrested on July 16th on charges that he misused $850,000 in member items that were set aside for the organization over several years. According to a report in The Times Ledger, Holmes claimed he would use the money to take campers on trips to Wall Street and Albany, but prosecutors allege that he used nearly $77,000 of the funds to pay employees of an after-school programs he ran.

Holmes has agreed to pay back tens of thousands of dollars to the state.

“Today’s plea and sentencing are an appropriate punishment for the crimes committed against the taxpayers of New York and the children for whom these funds were intended,” said state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a join statement. “We thank the Department of Investigation, as well as staff in both the attorney general’s and comptroller’s offices, for their diligent work and a successful outcome in this case.”

A large portion of the grants that Holmes received came from then-State Sen. Shirley Huntley (D-Queens), who allocated almost $80,000 in funds for Young Leaders Institute. Huntley plead guilty earlier this year to embezzling $88,000 from the Parents Workshop, an education nonprofit she helped create. Her case is not related to Holmes', authorities said.

You can read the full story in The Times Ledger.

Report: Budgets Up, But Women Underpaid At Central Florida Nonprofits

A new report from the Rollins Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership Center revealed that while budgets have increased at nonprofits in Central Florida, female executives are still being underpaid when compared to their male counterparts.

The 2013 Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits Report, the latest installment in a bi-annual report, studied the compensation practices of over 160 nonprofits in Central Florida. Margaret Linnane, executive director of Rollins Philanthropy, stated that salary disparity between male and female executives represents a continuation of trend found in their previous reports. She noted, though, that the economy seems to be improving, with 70 percent of nonprofits surveyed implementing some kind of pay raise.

"Almost two thirds of nonprofits reported increased budgets and salaries, especially in the development director field," said Linnane. "There was also a higher turnover rate for employees seeking new jobs and considering retirement. These factors indicate a recovering economy, which we haven’t seen in the reports for some time."

The average pay for all CEOs/Executive Directors in the sample was $99,868 per year; for men, the average annual CEO/Executive Director pay was $115,731; for women, the average annual CEO/Executive Director pay was $87,693. While a majority (57 percent) of those surveyed was women, a greater number of men are found in the CEO/Executive Director positions of the largest organizations, which tend to pay higher wages.

You can view the full report by visiting Rollins Philanthtopy's website.

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Want more data on nonprofit salary and benefits? Purchase The NonProfit Times' 2012 Salary and Benefits Reports, and don't forget to participate in our 2013 Salary Survey (deadline for completion in July 26th).

6 Tips For Your eNewsletter Campaigns

eNewsletters are an easier and cheaper alternative to print for keeping people in the loop about the latest happenings at the organization. Just because this technology is convenient, however, doesn't mean it's free of potential pitfalls.

People hate unwanted online communications just as much as telemarketers, and anti-SPAM rules have made sending eNewsletters to your supporters into an art form. If you don’t do it correctly you could find yourself in trouble and blocked.

Kivi Leroux Miller, president of NonprofitMarketingGuide.com, wrote in the book "Nonprofit Management 101" that there are a multitude of ways to ensure your organization gets its message across through eNewsletters while also remaining in compliance. She wrote that you should begin by following these six dos and don'ts:

• DO use an email service provider. You can’t do bulk email from your desktop for a variety of reasons, including the potential you’ll be labeled as a spammer.
• DO let your readers talk back. If someone replies to your eNewsletter, make sure it goes to an email box that someone is monitoring.
• DO master the art of subject line writing. The “From” field and the “Subject” line determine whether your email gets opened or deleted. Ensure what’s in the “from” field is recognizable to the reader and what’s in the subject line is interesting, intriguing, or otherwise compelling to your readers.
• DO master the art of headline writing. People naturally skim email, starting with headlines and subheads, so you want to grab their attention.
• DON’T send attachments, including PDFs of your print newsletter.
• DON’T rent or sell your e-mail list, and let your subscribers know that’s the case.