Annual Campaigns

With THON less than a month away, one can only wonder how the cancellation of several canning weekends will impact the bottom line. For years, Penn State students have traveled throughout the East Coast, holding cans and soliciting donations for THON, the world's largest student-run philanthropy. THON, of course, benefits cancer patients and research. This year,…

From late January until early April, nearly every potential legacy donor is using some portion of their time to pull together all of the documents required for tax filings with a financial planner. This is the time when those individuals already are thinking about estate planning and the benefits of charitable giving. Here are four…

Have you ever wondered, after the fact, why you donated to a particular cause or organization? You hadn’t planned on it. It wasn’t something that had been on your radar. So why did you give? The answer, in a lot of cases, is because it made you feel good. That’s how most of us feel…

For several years now, Jan. 1 not only has meant the beginning of the new year, but also an opportunity to look at trends in year-end fundraising emails from nonprofit organizations. Back in 2011, I started collecting all the emails that nonprofits sent me during the month of December and reviewed what was in my inbox.…

With the new year comes a sense of looking forward and leaving the past behind. You’ve just finished the year-end appeal and will now gear up for the next fundraising project. But not so fast—sorry to say, your year-end fund drive is not over. It’s actually never over. Let’s talk about some of the reasons…

It’s a busy time of year—for you and your donors. To get the most out of the effort you’re putting in to your campaigns, it’s important to focus in on the key elements that will move supporters to act and give before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. Your mission: to stand out, inspire,…

The Pittsburgh Foundation raised more than $1 million to fight homelessness Tuesday in record time—four hours. This week marks the foundation's third Critical Needs Alert fundraising campaign. The focus is on solutions to addressing homelessness and housing insecurity. The online donation portal PittsburghGives.org opened at 8 a.m. By noon, more than 1,200 individual donors had…

With consumers shifting their shopping online and their in-store purchasing from cash to plastic, The Salvation Army’s familiar red kettle campaign isn’t the reliable source of donations it once was for the nonprofit. Local Salvation Army chapters, which on average raise between 40 to 50 percent of their annual budgets during the holiday season, are…

You know that you should have a solid communications calendar in place, one that combines touches with direct asks throughout the year. But if your organization relies on its year-end direct-mail appeals to raise the majority of its funding, here are seven tips to get you headed in the right direction...

If you’ve been on Wikipedia at any point last week, you probably noticed a dramatic, black-and-yellow banner plastered atop your screen: “DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS,” it begins in all caps—before launching into a desperate, paragraph-long pitch for money. The banner heralds the start of the Wikimedia Foundation’s December fundraising drive, an annual Internet tradition as reliable…