Monday, January 29, 2007

The Board and Fundraising – from Fantasy to Reality

Hello all. Thanks for the great feedback about my article published in Charity Channel's Nonprofit Boards and Governance Review (see below) and on the featured article in my new January 2007 newsletter entitled: "The Board and Fundraising – from Fantasy to Reality." This article provides some basic ideas for Boards who are just getting started to be involved with fundraising. It isn't posted on my website yet, but if you go to my website and send me an email I will send you a copy.

Hope to hear from you.............

Marion Conway Consulting

Monday, January 22, 2007

Just Published - Host a Board Recruitment Event

The featured article in my fall newsletter -"Host a Board Recruitment Event" has just been published in Charity Channel's Nonprofit Boards and Governance Review. This is my third article published in NBGR. The link for this article is:

Host a Board Recruitment Event


Marion Conway Consulting

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Nonprofit Blog Exchange Project

Today's post is part of my participation in the Nonprofit Blog Exchange project. I have agreed to make a blog entry about two assigned nonprofit blogs and two others have been assigned to post about this blog.

Today's post is about "traumatreatment.blogspot.com." This is a residential treatment facility for children with serious behavior issues as a result of trauma. Their blog discusses their successes, analysis of data to correct problems early and emphasis on one on one support. If you know someone who is dealing with this type of problem you may want to check out this blog.

If you are interested in other nonprofit blogs check out those listed at the nonprofit blog exchange site.

Marion Conway Consulting


Trauma Treatment Center

Nonprofit Blog Exchange

Sunday, January 07, 2007

New Study Provides Benchmarks for Museums

The American Association of Museums has published a report which analyzes 2003-05 statistics from more than 800 museums across the country. Even if your museum, or historic site is much smaller there is a lot of information to be gleaned from this report.

To put the data in this blog post in perspective, here are the median statistics for the 800 museums included in the study. Median attendance has held steady at 34,000 visitors a year since 2000, with 15 percent of that coming from school visits. The median museum has operating expenses of $783,000 and a staff of six fulltime employees, four part-timers and 60 volunteers, the study says.

Overall, the study says, museums are in better financial shape now than in 2003, with a third fewer institutions reporting deficits.

That improvement occurred as government support for museums declined to about one in four dollars of operating income, and as private support grew to account for more than one in three dollars of income.

Museum endowments also grew, with almost half crediting new contributions and more than half citing changes in financial markets.

And almost one in four institutions is currently involved in a capital campaign, with a median goal of $10 million.

Fundraising remains critical for museums, given that the median cost of serving a visitor is $23, the study says, compared to a median admission fee of $6.

Major benchmarking takaways whether you are a large or small museum:
Government support averages 25%
25% of museums are having a capital campaign
Fundraising is cricial
Median cost of serving a visitor - $23
Median admission fee - $6.

Hmmm...some food for thought...........

Happy New Year!
Marion
Marion Conway Consulting