Fundraiser Education
February 9, 2017 at 10:14 am
In my 30 years of involvement with philanthropy professionally, when volunteers and professionals think of fundraising, they almost invariably are thinking of that moment when an “ask” is made. Whether through the mail, email, social media or—the dreaded face-to-face meeting—the act of asking for money sends chills up the spine and tremors of fear through the limbs...
February 8, 2017 at 11:18 am
When we attend the same conferences, see the same people and hear from many of the same people, we are not growing as much as we can. One of the things I love about our consulting practice is that we work with clients of all sizes and stripes. We learn from each engagement, which we are honored to work with...
February 8, 2017 at 9:39 am
Last week, this piece on marketing automation ran in the Huffington Post, pushing nonprofits to invest in marketing automation. I am here to beat the drum again, as it may be one of our most important conversations...
February 7, 2017 at 12:39 pm
Your organization’s major donors are, after all, right in your backyard. Yep, they’re already in your donor database, and you just have to know how to work them. Here’s the 411: If you’re not honoring your first-time or small-dollar donors and if your systems are broken, you’re going to have a hard time getting from here…to there...
February 7, 2017 at 9:42 am
Are you confused between opinions and facts when it comes to email marketing? Here’s a list of 104 answers for you…
February 7, 2017 at 8:38 am
The Surdna Foundation plans to put $100 million of its roughly $1 billion endowment into investments that seek both financial and social returns. "The investments are an experiment," Shuaib Siddiqui, director of impact investing at Surdna, said. "We’re carving out this $100 million pool of capital to figure out: Can we continue to meet the needs…
February 6, 2017 at 10:06 am
When you fully embrace what I am talking about, you learn to focus on relationship and conversations versus getting distracted by the “yes” and “no.” You learn to take your time and nurture things along, to really value the donor and to really listen and care.
February 3, 2017 at 12:06 pm
In last year’s installment of this annual nonprofit trends feature, we wrote that something felt different about all the change happening in the sector. We chalked it up to urgency. Acceleration. Things were changing fast. That was nothing compared to what’s in store for 2017. We collected insights, observations and predictions from some of the nonprofit sector’s smartest people, and we’re delivering them to you here. We hope the 40 ideas here paint a clearer picture of the sector as it is and as it will be...
February 3, 2017 at 10:39 am
As I have for four consecutive years, I’m starting 2017 off with a report on last year’s charitable giving volume. The analysis is based on 17 million individual direct mail contributions received in 2016 by more than 60 national nonprofit organizations. It encompasses six primary charitable sectors served by Merkle’s Response Management Group...
February 2, 2017 at 11:46 am
Fidelity Charitable, the public charity arm of mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments, raised $7 million in bitcoin donations last year. The organization launched the donation option in November 2015, enabling contributions from customers by way of their donor-advised funds. Fidelity Charitable has utilized Coinbase as a payment processor to handle bitcoin-to-dollar conversions. New statements from…
