The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer organization, maintains, on its Web site, a chronology of U.S. data breaches. The list, which the organization began in January 2005, provides the basic details of hundreds of breaches in the for-profit, government, educational, and non-profit (charitable) sectors; breaches are common enough that the list is updated twice a week. The total number of records containing sensitive data that have been involved -- again, this is just in the U.S., and just in three years -- 252,276,766. Read more...

Auctions have long been a crucial, and lucrative, element of nonprofit fundraising campaigns, and their popularity has grown in recent years. According to the National Auctioneers Association, more than $16.2 billion was raised in charity auctions in 2007. While the raw dollar figures suggest that auctions are lucrative, dollar returns are not the only indicators of an auction's success. And according to the leaders of two major online auction companies that cater specifically to nonprofits, if your organization is only conducting offline, "event" auctions, and not utilizing online auction resources, it's likely you're passing up many opportunities. Read more...

In many ways, the nonprofit technology world mirrored the for-profit tech arena in 2008, as social media (Web 2.0 applications that enable people to connect easily: e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Twitter, Digg, YouTube, Flickr, etc.), grew as a set of mainstream communication tools. In the process, the Internet continued to become more of a two-way communication tool for nonprofits than in previous years, while at the same time capacity -- and capabilities -- enabled broader adoption of high-bandwidth tools such as videocasts and real-time videoconferencing. Read more...

Today's challenging economic times mean a lot of nonprofits are looking for new ways to raise money. Many organizations realize the Internet presents a huge opportunity, but most have achieved limited success. If your organization, like many others, has yet to experience strong results raising funds online, the coming year provides an ideal window to experiment with new approaches. A good first step, however, is debunking some myths about online fundraising that might stand in the way of your success. Read more...