Creative

If you can't even get the person's name or last gift right, how on earth do you expect a donor to believe you will use his or her donations effectively?

Here are ideas that I've heard fundraising professionals advise over and over during the past few years — all of which make good sense and great fundraising.

Enjoy your New Year and remember: There should always be "fun" in FUNdraising.

Fundraisers that succeed in 2012 will remember A, B, C: alignment, balance and clarity.

For fundraisers, our holiday wishes are simple — good income, good income and, of course, good income! But looking ahead to 2012, here are three things I'd like to find under the tree Christmas morning that I guarantee will bring happiness to me through the new year.

Women teasingly taking off lingerie; obscene language flying left and right; graphic violence both bloody and disturbing. Is this the content of some R-rated film? Could be. But these days, eye-opening scenes like this can also be found in charity marketing campaigns.

Marketing consultant John J. Burnett understands that in these tough economic times, charities are trying harder than ever to get attention.

However, he cautions, “the risks are greater than the level of awareness they are going to create. You could end up trivializing the cause or diminishing the actual problem.”

You can't change the economy, but you can do your best to keep your fundraising on track. Here are five steps for fundraising in a recession and making the most of the year-end.

Sure, there are important differences in creative approach for mail and electronic media. But many marketing and fundraising best practices transcend the medium involved. Here are a few examples.

Fundraising consultant Nancy Schwartz shares seven steps to take to motivate your network to take the actions you need

1. Abstraction is deadly. Be concrete and specific.
2. Feature a single individual, rather than a group or - far worse - daunting stats that seem absolutely insurmountable.
3. Focus on a positive story - with specifics - of someone whose life is improved as a result of your organization's work!

ACTION Against Hunger, a nonprofit group that fights malnutrition, is running a public service ad campaign that uses nontraditional, abstract imagery, rather than photos of starving children, to gain support.

Instead of employing photographs of starving children, the ads take a different tack. One shows a line of seven simple paper dolls; the doll in the middle is a stick figure compared with the other six. Copy in this ad says, “3.5 million children die each year from acute malnutrition. Take action. Save a child. ActionAgainstHunger.org.”