Nick Ellinger

What if I told you there was a way to hit the reset button? There is (psychologically at least). It's called the fresh start effect. This also has implications for your fundraising. Your donors are going through this same self-assessment and those are perhaps most pliable in their giving habits.

We've seen many organizations that have been challenged by knowing the real nature of their business. Challenges like this stem from thinking the tangible thing we do is more important than the meaning people get from what we do. For nonprofits, this can manifest when we do these three things.

We can live without the office, but we can't live without a digital connection. And yet, think about our investments of time and energy in each. Some of the former debate is merited, but too often our digital infrastructure is like the plumbing, in that, we only notice it when it goes awry.

Here's how to make peer-to-peer hybrid events successful in 2021 and beyond from Sue Citro, chief experience officer for Best Friends Animal Society; Nick Ellinger, chief brand officer at Moore; and Peter Panepento, philanthropic practice leader at Turn Two Communications...

For the past decade, digital monthly giving was going to increase by more than digital one-time giving. It was inevitable. Every year, people became more comfortable with monthly subscriptions, and charities asked for monthly gifts more often. That was until last year...

Few museums and cultural institutions have found fundraising innovation to be enough in these challenging times, but there are some innovations from the space worth sharing in the hopes of helping many of these venerable and venerated institutions pull through...

During the pandemic, it seemed like every week there was a shortage of something you just assumed would always be available. There's even a Wikipedia page called "Shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic," that includes not just the titular ketchup packets and yeast...

Imagine with me that you are listening to the radio, and they mentioned a horrific famine affecting four countries in Africa. This should not be too hard to imagine — in 2018, famines in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen have been called the greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

In talking about donor identities, marketers will often say they’ve tried personas, and they haven’t worked like the marketer thought they would. Therefore, they aren’t going to invest more in seeking donor identities. Donor identities and personas are fundamentally different.

Consumers respond to any new form of marketing with excitement. Think how excited the villagers were to get the Wells Fargo wagon in "The Music Man" compared to how excited you are to get the mail today. Or banner ads, the first of which had a 78% click-through rate.

In theory, monthly givers are an annuity—a bit of an upfront investment, yielding solid, steady returns for the foreseeable future. In practice, they are more of a garden—plant the wrong seeds or neglect care, and no amount of shoveling manure will recoup your investment...

Framing your donations as a set can double, triple or even quadruple your average gift. Hopefully, that statement is enough to get you to plow through some psychology, behavioral science, and peer-reviewed research with me...

It’s nearing the end of the year, a time when we come together and celebrate family, faith and the fact that our donation could be matched two to five times, if we act now, now, now!...

The problem with any single metric is, as either or both of Karl Pearson and Peter Drucker have said, “That which is measured, improves.” My corollary to this is, “What isn’t measured is sacrificed to improve that which is measured.”...

There is something inherently satisfying about setting up an automated marketing system. Whether it’s retargeting, welcome series, scheduled social updates, automated ad buys, there is a temptation to "Ron Popeil" these efforts (“Just set it, and forget it!”)...