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The NonProfit Times is excited to announce a new way to receive breaking nonprofit news, fundraising tips, job postings, information on upcoming events and more, without opening your email! Introducing NPT Desktop Delivery, a communication service which sends subscribers daily nonprofit updates directly to their desktops.

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Click here to download NPT Desktop Channel NOW! The software is quick and simple to install.Top Reasons To Use NPT Desktop Delivery:· NPT updates delivered straight to your desktop· You control when messages are delivered· No more blocked emails, so you won’t miss important nonprofit news!· Completely hacker-proof Powered by: THINK360

Benchmarking With A Warped Stick - Latest Column from Don't Tell the Donor

A lot of nonprofit fundraisers seem to love benchmarking studies.

I really can’t blame them. Fundraisers are always judged by their numbers, after all. If we are going to be compared what we raised during the same period in previous years it only makes sense to understand the context of giving to other similar organizations.

Anytime your fundraising program experiences large increases or decreases, it’s helpful to understand if the change is being driven by broader external factors or by specific issues to your audience and mission. Benchmarking studies can help identify trends in key indicators and give fundraisers the context we need in order to understand our own performance better and plan for the future.

Unfortunately, not all benchmarking studies are created equal. Some studies are nothing more than lazy half-assed analysis from vendors hawking thinly veiled sales pitches. Other well-meaning benchmarks often use questionable methodology. A flawed approach can produce misleading conclusions.

It’s therefore critical for fundraisers to share their feedback and reactions to what the benchmark studies are showing. This article compares the methodology of three of the most cited (and debated) benchmarking studies making their way around the blogosphere today. Perhaps the most well known fundraising benchmark study is the annual report on philanthropy published by the Giving USA Foundation as a public service initiative of the Trust for Philanthropy of the American Association of Fundraising Counsel (AAFRC). These are the people who received a lot of media attention by estimating that Americans donated nearly $300 billion to charity during 2006.

Click Here To Read Complete Article...

Dirt Cookies Instead of Air Sandwiches

They're not supposed to taste good. After all, they're called dirt cookies. Bright Hope International, based outside Chicago in Hoffman Estates, Ill., is selling "dirt cookies" as a symbol of poverty around the world. The nonprofit offers a package of six cookies for a donation -- of any size -- but stresses that $50 can provide a Haitian family of six with food for a month and the ability to plant their own garden.

"Eat dirt so they don't have to," the Web site proclaims.

Food shortages and escalating prices have made the poor on Haiti so desperate they eat the dirt cookies, made of clay, to alleviate hunger pains. Bright Hope's dirt cookies are 100 percent edible but they're not sold for the taste as much as for raising money and spreading awareness. With ingredients like shortening, salt, coffee, buckwheat flour, teff (an Ethiopian grain), cocoa powder, corn starch and terramin clay, the cookies won't tempt your palate, but they will give you a good idea of what poor people in places like Haiti have resorted to eating.

- Mark Hrywna