Creative

This year I wanted to 1) motivate nonprofit communicators to reflect so they'll increase the impact of their work this year and 2) share the core lessons learned with their peers. Thus the "most valuable marketing lessons learned in 2010" survey was born.

I deliberately became a lapsed donor (13+ months) in early 2010 in order to receive more reinstatement and acquisition mail, to see how nonprofits would endeavor to woo me back. Recent lapsed-donor direct-mail efforts from St. Labre and CARE really stand out.

Fundraising pros Dane Grams and Richard DeVeau offer some general tips for small and midsized nonprofit organizations.

Do you have the guts? I have 10 ideas that might scare the daylights out of you. They're probably difficult, politically unpopular or against the rules of your organization. Furthermore, these ideas might not work for you. They could even be very, very bad for you. But I don't think so. These are good ideas that have worked for others who made them happen despite the difficulties. I dare you to try at least one.

Robert Croft and Jennifer Renner shared three keys that make the difference between mediocre fundraising and successful fundraising in tough times during an AFP presentation.

Nonprofit organizations of all sizes have a valuable opportunity to strengthen their messaging with the just-launched Nonprofit Tagline Database.

Here are nine things about fundraising I've discovered along the way that I really wish I'd known earlier.

With the dust beginning to settle after election 2010, now is a good time to take a look at the role direct mail played in how the parties and candidates raised money and turned voters out to the polls ... or not. As with every election, there were new movements and people wrestling for power, but the mail they sent was, with very few exceptions, pretty traditional.

We'd like to introduce SOFII to those of our readers who don't know about it and share some of the fundraising efforts that have made it into the site's Best of the Best Showcase.

We found eight distinct cases of hemispheric flip in direct-mail fundraising. Hemispheric flip is when the sides of the brain are incorrectly deployed: What should be rational decisions are made emotionally ... and vice versa.