James Sullivan

Most Americans are unsure about what the recent tax bill signed by President Donald Trump will mean to the average nonprofit donor. Most nonprofits should again turn to their databases and list brokers to set their target for an uneven or even minimal growth prospect for the new year. Mailing smarter should be your 2018 goal...

It's not too late to plan now for your New Year’s fundraising campaign. So, let’s continue the assumption your new job with the nonprofit requires a complete direct mail campaign from scratch. Don’t fret! Here is a good list of things to start with: call your list broker, do the numbers, plan the mailing and test, test, test...

For most nonprofits, the year-end fundraising season almost always appears suddenly on your calendar. The kids are back in school, the leaves are changing and frost is now appearing daily on your windshields. You can almost feel it in the air that it’s time to start thinking and planning for your winning strategies for your year-end fundraising campaigns...

Your lapsed donors used to be part of your core reservoir of donations. Why did they leave you when you needed them most? What percentage of your total donor base do these lapsed donors represent to you, how much money are you losing each month that they are absent from your community?...

Who is Travis Bickel? Heard of Nelson Brittles? How about Blanche DuBois? Well, these are all fictional characters from movies, TV as well as stage and screen. They represent my short list of seed names that I use in all my direct-mail marketing campaigns for my nonprofit mailings...

In this challenging economy, more and more nonprofits, magazines and even brick-and-mortar stores are cutting back on their marketing efforts to better focus on email marketing. Developing or continuing a relationship via email is a good way to further the mission of your organization with the inclusion of more tools in your toolbox...

Dialogue with your donors, clients or prospects begins with good data; we all know that one tenet of direct mail—garbage in and out. When we go to the mailbox, a treasure trove of information on fun, as well as vital information, awaits us. Some good, some bad and at most, lame or even useless...

There are a lot of disaster stories out there; some are just plain sad, and some didn’t even make the mailstream. One such sad story began with the creative, and the clients decided that they wanted to have a singing microchip sing a popular song about their product...

July 21, 2009, FindingDulcinea.com — In an economy that has withered corporate and individual charitable donations, a few nonprofit organizations, such as Anne Mahlum’s Back on My Feet, are experiencing success.