By Heather H. Thornton I recently made a significant gift to my beloved alma mater, The University of the South. It wasn’t a large gift by any means, nor was it in support of an important campaign or a particular project meaningful to me. So why was this gift so significant, you ask?

Being in the fundraising profession, my travels always involve visiting museums and cultural institutions to see how they do things. A recent visit to Dallas included a splendid afternoon at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. A spectacular angular building rises from along the downtown expressway and draws interest with its living roof covered […]

It would be hard to argue that the 1870’s to the 1890’s were not the golden age of philanthropy in America. In a little over two decades, the number of millionaires in the United States grew from 100 to 4,047. Mega gifts from philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie, Ezra Cornell, Johns Hopkins, John Rockefeller, and Jane […]

Scientists have argued for years over whether or not the universe is expanding or shrinking. With the recent arrival of the Giving USA statistics for 2013, many nonprofit leaders are asking the same question about another type of universe –the “universe” of prospective donors to our non-profit organizations. For some of these leaders, there may […]

You know the saying that what goes up must come down. This year, we’ve learned the inverse is true when it comes to giving to the arts. What has been down is now coming up! The 2013 Giving USA results show an increase of 7.8 percent, and that’s not even the best part. In 2007, […]

Institutions which raise funds for endowments need to be mindful of complying with the donor’s intentions long after the gift was made, and often after the fundraiser who closed the gift is gone from the institution. Although agreeing to a donor’s intentions seems to be a straightforward proposition when dealing with one donor and one […]

I love New York: the people, the arts, and all the other things that make it a great city. But right now, I am not very fond of the 26 City Council members who recently demanded that Wal-Mart and The Walton Family Foundation stop making generous gifts to charities in the city. Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t […]

It’s the 25th of June—summer has officially just begun—and already Atlanta temperatures have shot into the 90s. Yesterday, my car registered 113 degrees on the Friday afternoon parking lot in Atlanta that is otherwise known as Interstate 285. As I sat on the I-285 Perimeter, I was trying to think of all the things I […]