Creative

As you plan the last quarter of 2012 and look ahead to 2013’s fundraising calendar, here are some things to think about to improve your chances of “happily ever after.”

Potholes can lead our donors away from our message — and rob us of much-needed revenue. Try to avoid these three as you navigate your fall fundraising schedule.

I suppose we could argue for days about what is the worst abuse a nonprofit could heap upon its donors, and certainly ethical breeches would be right at the top. However, I contend that boring donors to death comes in slightly below that. It's not illegal — but it probably should be.

Relevance is the heart of memorable, motivating fundraising messages — "aha! messages." If your messages are irrelevant (more than seven of 10 nonprofits describe their messages as off target), your organization will fail to motivate the gifts and loyalty you need to move your mission forward.

As Walt Disney once said, "Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language." How's your grasp of that language?

Three fundraising professionals shared their "20 Big Ideas for Small Nonprofits" at the 2012 Washington Nonprofit Conference. Here are ideas 16-20.

Fairleigh Dickinson University broke out of this pattern via a deliberate, well-articulated restructuring. Here's FDU's strategy and results, and my recommendation of a four-step process to bring marketing and fundraising into a productive partnership.

Three fundraising professionals shared their "20 Big Ideas for Small Nonprofits" at the 2012 Washington Nonprofit Conference. Here are ideas 1-5.

In the fall of 2010, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview was looking to build a brand-new donor base through e-mail. Here are three takeaways it learned with vendor KMA through testing.

Here are four ways (with four more to come next week) that smaller nonprofits can compete with — and even beat — bigger organizations in fundraising.