Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Importance of Capacity Research

Margaret King has an article titled "Prospect Research: What You Don't Know and How it Can Hurt You" in this month's Fundraising Success gives a great example of why capacity research is so important. While her description of research techniques is simplified for the publication, it is a good piece to forward to development staff who may not understand the value of research.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Love at First Site

For keeping up with the Real Estate Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, my favorite is Luxist.com's Sunday Real Estate Roundup. Each Sunday, blogger Deidre Woollard sums up the hot property scoops from the New York Observer, New York Post, LA Times, and others. (Now if they could just come up with an RSS Feed that pushed ONLY the real estate news...)

By the way, I use my.yahoo.com as my RSS aggregator. It is a convenient way to get weather, headlines, personal e-mail, and RSS Feeds all in one place.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Thursday News Round-Up

OK, I know it's Friday. [Thursday is the day I pick up my organic produce from the CSA, so the day got away from me. Probably more information that anyone needs to know!]

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New ideas of what truly motivates donor giving, from research presented at "Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charitable Giving," a conference funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and sponsored by Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Bank of America increases giving for health, housing, and the arts.

Times were when a yacht under water spelled disaster, but that was before the luxury submarine became a billionaire trend.

Robert Frank reports on trust fund baby trends in the LA Times. Free registration required.[Researcher Musings: Does anyone actually tell the truth when asked for birthdate and income on a free registration form?]

Time Magazine’s coverage of the latest web “tools” for researching individuals underscores the need for attention to ethics and factual verification in fundraising research. [Note: This is an editorial comment, not an article summary.] As researchers, we need to be aware of what is being said on privacy issues and online ethics; we're in the thick of it.

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Have a great weekend!