fedgazette July 2006 | The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Though a major part of the economy, the nonprofit sector is poorly understood and maybe a tad underappreciated.

Tracking the elusive nonprofit economy
Data are hard to find, harder to compare.
Connecting the nonprofit growth dots
The leader of the nonprofit pack
Foundations grow in number and size; effect is multifold.
Charity case: Trends in giving
Measures of giving are not always straightforward.
What factors are associated with changes in nonprofit receipts?
Non-profit organizations play a key role in providing services to a broad section of society. Nonprofit organizations include, but are not limited to, hospitals, foundations, arts organizations, political action groups, child care and adult education programs. U.S. gross receipts of non-profit organizations totaled $2,266 billion in November 2005, or 18 percent of GDP. In this analysis county-level data is used to assess what factors are associated with changes in the receipts of non-profit organizations. Each county is treated as an individual unit. U.S. county data for gross receipts of non-profit organizations was collected and characteristics that may affect receipts, such as population and population density, income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, median age and other variables were used to help explain changes in counties. The analysis included a data set of counties from 47 states and a subset of the data with the 303 counties in the Ninth Federal Reserve District.

South Dakota “steaks” its reputation on beef branding program
Value-added marketing promotes quality of state’s agricultural output.
End of the (credit) line?
Rising interest rates haven’t increased loan delinquencies—yet.
Canadian tourism on the rise, eh?
Thanks to better exchange rates, Canadians are starting to reverse a long, steady decline in visits to the district.

District economic growth remains on track
Ninth District economic forecast.
Professional services firms anticipate higher profits, tighter labor supply
Accountants, architects, engineers and other professional services firms did well over the past year and expect to continue to grow over the next four quarters, according to results of the first survey of professional services firms, conducted in May and early June of 2006 by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Energy drives district farmers' planting decisions