When you make a one time gift on GiveMN.org to your favorite nonprofits you’re making a valuable contribution. But setting up regular deductions is a great way to continue to support your causes in a way that is extremely convenient. And by using GiveMN.org you’ll have a one stop website for tracking all your charitable giving. Here’s how to set up electronic deductions from your credit card or bank account using GiveMN.org.

• Start by finding your nonprofit or cause to support
• In the donate box, type amount you wish to have deducted each time the recurrence takes place (i.e. $10 can recur monthly for a total of $120 per year)
• You will then have the option to set the recurrence rate of weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually

That’s it! It’s that simple.

Our friends at Smartgivers.org have posted a few wonderful tips on finding safe charitable giving opportunities in response to the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.

The impact of Chile’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake on Saturday and the ongoing devastation from Haiti’s earthquake continue to yield tragic loss of lives, thousands of missing people and widespread destruction in affected areas.  

The Charities Review Council offers the following tips on smart giving during disasters and how to exercise caution when responding to disaster-relief appeals:

• Types of support: The best assistance is a financial donation to a relief organization already operating in the affected area.  Do not send goods to an organization unless specifically requested.
• When researching where to send a gift, consider the following:
  • Is the organization legitimate? If an organization is calling you, be wary. Established disaster-relief organizations are often too busy to implement a direct phone campaign during times of disaster.  Don’t be afraid to say “no” over the phone and then contact the organization directly yourself. 
  • Are you confident the organization has the infrastructure and capacity to put your donation to good use?
  • Check out organizations at the Charities Review Council online Giving Guide.

...Read the full post at www.smartgivers.org.

We’ve been scouring the GiveMN pages and are excited about how nonprofits and individual fundraisers are tweaking their GiveMN page to make it look its best. Here’s a brief checklist for sprucing up your page to make sure it represents you and your organization well...

For the past three Holiday Seasons, the Twice the Gift store has provided many area nonprofit organizations the opportunity to raise money by selling merchandise and Share Cards to the public in a retail venue.

 Last year Twice the Gift moved to the IDS Center and sales grew  by more than 400 customers and sales topped $92,000! To continue to grow and evolve Twice the Gift would like to add even more diversity to the product-line and partners.

 Twice the Gift was the vision of the Pohlad Family Foundation who developed the concept of a retail store that could support a number of area nonprofit organizations and their holiday products and gift items...