Overcoming Tough Times

In these hard economic times, many charities are focusing on the fundamentals of fund raising. Some are trying to cut the costs of seeking donations, while others are experimenting with appeals for gifts that anyone can afford.

A growing number of organizations are bolstering their efforts to seek matching gifts from corporations or stepping up their appeals to foundations. At the Detroit Institute of Arts, where the region's battered economy has made it tough to rely on donations from automakers and other big companies, fund raisers have turned to small businesses and have had success persuading them to match the donations their employees made to become members of the museum.

But reaching out to businesses, foundations, and the federal government for money is often a time-consuming task. The federal government and a growing number of private foundations are trying to make their operations more efficient and ultimately better for grant seekers by requiring online applications. But most of the systems take a lot of the grant seekers' time and don't offer some of the features of traditional grant proposals.

PLUS:

Wine sparkles as a fund raiser for charities that have sold custom labels or held wine tastings to bring in money for their causes.

A comic strip, specially drawn for the purpose, gave an Ohio charity's annual appeal a different look and helped it surpass its fund-raising goal.

Dinosaur bones were the centerpiece of a campaign by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History that allowed donors to attach their names to remains as small as a single tooth.

An hour's pay was the gift requested of donors to a New York charity that wanted not just to raise money but also to highlight the issue of child labor in India.