Can charities fundamentally change Russian society? Nonprofit executives in Russia think that the answer is yes. Last month we traveled to Russia to teach peer-to-peer fundraising to Russian nonprofits...
Otis Fulton and Katrina VanHuss
I (Otis) grew up in a political family. When I was young, my father was a four-term county attorney, so a good portion of every election year was spent campaigning. As a result, politics-watching has been a sport for me my entire life...
As a recent blog in NonProfit PRO described, artificial intelligence is all the rage in the nonprofit world. Traditionally slow to embrace technologies employed in the for-profit world, nonprofits have actually been early adopters of AI...
In a recent blog, we talked about the negative consequences of evaluating nonprofits on the basis of their “overhead ratios,” the ratio of the organization’s operating costs to its income. Although useful when looked at in conjunction with other aspects of the organization’s data, it can be downright misleading...
The Well Coffeehouse is the setting for a beautiful love story. The Well Coffeehouse is a nonprofit organization in Nashville, Tenn., that sells coffee to build wells for those in water-risk. There are five stores and a roasting facility in Nashville, and one franchise location...
Each individual metric we track and try to improve upon is a KPI. And if we just try to improve KPIs, we will fail at accomplishing our missions because we are focused on the wrong things. Why is focusing on KPIs bad?...
Recently we collaborated with one of Turnkey’s clients on the strategy to launch a crowdfunding campaign to run concurrently with its peer-to-peer events. Crowdfunding and peer-to-peer are different animals. The former is a direct-response outreach; the appeal is made directly by the nonprofit to potential donors...
In previous blogs, we have been critical of the way in which nonprofits are often evaluated—their so-called “overhead ratios.” An overhead ratio compares the operating costs of the nonprofit with its income. A low-overhead ratio implies that the organization is minimizing its expenses (e.g. salaries, office rent) and, therefore, has more resources available to dedicate to its mission...
One of the great pleasures in working with nonprofits is getting up every day and knowing that you are helping them do good on behalf of their constituencies. There are nonprofits out there that advocate on behalf of people living with autism, cancer, ALS and cystic fibrosis...
Benchmarking, while less expensive to produce, simply does not answer our questions sufficiently. Peer-to-peer fundraising must begin using predictive analytics to plan, design and change. If not, we’ll be moving a lot of couches...
What if, instead of asking your peer-to-peer fundraisers to set a revenue goal, you asked them to set a goal around the number of donations they gathered? Instead of asking, for example, “Would you raise $250 to fight childhood cancer?” you asked, “Would you recruit 10 friends to make a donation to fight childhood cancer?”...
The most productive peer-to-peer fundraising events do not spend big money on events. Spending big money on events is actually counterproductive, because this conveys the message that the organization is in a transactional relationship with its volunteer fundraisers...
Most of the readers of our blog not only work in the nonprofit sector, but are also personal supporters of various charitable missions. Speaking for myself (Otis), I consider myself to be an “animal rights advocate” and make monthly donations to a variety of animal welfare organizations...
According to Facebook, over 750,000 nonprofits have used Facebook’s fundraising tools since the platform rolled out the feature in 2015. It began as a way for individuals to donate and, in 2016, expanded to allow individuals to allow people to ask their Facebook friends to donate to personal causes...
Let’s face facts: Facebook is in our peer-to-peer fundraising space. And while that is scary, it opens up a world of possibility if we choose to come out and play. Let’s talk about the playing field, how to get on it and what might happen to your organization if you do...
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