Target Analytics, a Blackbaud company, released the 2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis report - detailing the donation trends of nearly 10 million people.

The report's key findings concluded that online non-profit fundraising has increasingly become a significant source of new donors and integrating both online and offline fundraising channels is key to long term success.

"Online giving is growing rapidly, and many online donors have a tendency to also give offline, so fundraisers face increasing complexity in managing an integrated direct marketing program that maximizes donor value," said Rob Harris, Target Analytics' vice president of analytics. "With direct mail, the blueprints for success are well-known, but in this new multi-channel world everything is new and many strategies are still unproven."

Other findings from the 2008 report include:

* Online giving is still relatively small but increasing at a fast rate

* Online donors are younger and generally more affluent than offline donors

* Donor managementmust integrate online and offline channels. While most offline donors stay there, many online donors migrate to offline donor channels in large numbers

Access the full report by going to http://www.blackbaud.com/targetanalytics/benchmarking/dcinternet.aspx or view the press release from Blackbaud here.

Teaching online can either be a big headache or a pleasure. It really depend on how your approach things and manage your time - as it is slightly different than the traditional classroom.

Kaye Shelton has posted some great tips on the Sloan Consortium's blog to help online teachers better manage their time and make things run smoother. These Time Saving Tips for Teaching Online help you utilitze education technology to reach students all over the world to help them learn whichever subject you're teaching. These tips include:

1. Carefully Develop Online Materials
2. Course Schedule
3. Write a Welcome Note
4. Print out Student Introductions

...and more.

Blackbaud, an education software solutions provider, has many programs available to help you manage and teach courses online.

Check-out the Kaye's full post here for all the tips along with more in-depth explanation of each.

Each year, Blackbaud holds informative conferences for The Raiser's Edge and other conferences for nonprofits in North America - one in Ottawa, Canada on May 13-15 and the other in Charleston, South Carolina on November 15-18.

Sessions for these events are either general in nature, directly related to Blackbaud donor management and enrollment management software solutions, while others are developed around specific issues nonprofits face.

Attendees of these conferences travel from across the United States and Canada. The Ottawa conference is expected to draw 300+ attendees while the Charleston conference is expected to have around 1100 people attend.

We're looking for energetic speakers, those who are interactive in their presentation, involving the audience in their session. Speakers are encouraged to attend the entire conference - a complimentary ticket to all events is provided to the speaker at no charge.

To learn more, visit our speaker's resource page and fill out an application.

Deadline to apply for submissions to this year's conference is March 27th.