70 Nonprofit Trends for 2015

A few simple but powerful questions will get you on your way to leveraging your networks. What does our audience look like? Why are they engaging with our organization? How can we better inspire them to engage their friends on our behalf? These questions will form the core of successful programs in 2015.

3. Stop trying to re-create the Ice Bucket Challenge. Your constituents’ inboxes, walls and news feeds are flooded with solicitations. As a result, they have developed finely tuned authenticity radars. It is impossible to replicate, manufacture or plan authenticity ahead of time. The Ice Bucket Challenge was a truly bottom-up fundraising phenomenon, and everyone wanted a piece of the peer-to-peer golden child in 2014. Imitation Ice Buckets floundered then and will flounder in 2015 because they are, by definition, contrived. They will set off your constituents’ authenticity alarms.

2015 is the time to let Ice Bucket Challenge lottery dreams go. Turn the microscope around, focus on your mission, tell a compelling story and focus on building long-term relationships instead of quick-fix money.

Katrina VanHuss, CEO, Turnkey Promotions
4. Online platforms do not equal peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns. Many nonprofits are now attempting to use the peer-to-peer income channel. Technology enhancements have made online giving in the P2P channel available to every organization, and the misconception is that “if I have a platform live, I have a peer-to-peer program.” The misperception is that peer-to-peer is a marketing program, delivered online. The reality is that most programs built in this manner die. Peer-to-peer fundraising starts with peer-to-peer recruitment to that process. Peer-to-peer fundraising is a messy, human business, the kind of business that many people avoid studiously. An online platform and online communications are handy tools that can increase efficiency in this channel, but are not in and of themselves a peer-to-peer program. Without talent and expertise to set up strategy, manage volunteers and execute complex operations successfully, a peer-to-peer program exists in name only.