NonProfit Pro

Relationships with amazing donors are so rewarding. They benefit your mission and they enrich our lives as fundraising professionals. I have learned and grown from each interaction and donor relationship. Nurturing those relationships is fun—but can't be left to chance. It is an ongoing cycle of genuine activities to deepen a dialogue and express thanks. Here are 20 ideas of how to show your best friends just how important they are.

After three years of research and development by Public Interest Registry, Reston, Va., the nonprofit operator of the .org domain, OnGood is now generally available to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide. Anchored by the new .ngo and .ong domain bundle, OnGood is a suite of online services exclusively for NGOs and nonprofits to help strengthen their online presence, improve visibility and better connect with supporters.

Today Ted Hart, CEO of Charities Aid Foundation of America (CAFAmerica) and CEO of P2P Fundraising, GreenNonprofits.org and TedHart.com, speaks with Simone P. Joyaux, ACFRE, a consultant specializing in fund development, strategic planning and board development, about thoughtful, inspirational philanthropy on Hart's Nonprofit Coach radio show.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is a long shot for the 2016 nomination—a very long shot. His early fundraising campaign, however, is putting Republicans to shame.

CNN has the scoop:

Bernie Sanders' nascent presidential campaign announced Friday that it raised more than $1.5 million in its first 24 hours, a number that far outpaces what Republican presidential hopefuls posted in their first day.

Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, kicked off his dark horse campaign for the Democratic nomination on Thursday with an email to supporters and a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol.

The six Baltimore police officers involved in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray were charged with a range of crimes yesterday, including homicide and manslaughter. Shortly thereafter, the Baltimore Police Union attempted to raise $600,000 for the officers' "living and legal expenses" via a GoFundMe campaign, the Baltimore Sun reports. That campaign was only up for around 40 minutes before it was taken down for violating GoFundMe's terms of use.

"GoFundMe cannot be used to benefit those who are charged with serious violations of the law," Kelsea Little, a spokesperson for GoFundMe, said.

California may require charities that raise money in the state to disclose the names of major contributors, a federal appeals court decided Friday.

The decision stemmed from a lawsuit by the Center for Competitive Politics, a group that opposes campaign finance and reporting regulations. Another charitable group backed by conservative donors David and Charles Koch filed a similar suit in federal court in December.

The center contended the disclosure requirement violated its 1st Amendment rights to freedom of association and asked a district judge to prevent Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris from enforcing it. The judge refused...

If you want better returns on your email marketing efforts, pay close attention to your subject lines.

"Clickbait" subject lines that try to shock you into reading a message and those that promote prices and discounts are among the least effective, according to new research from data solutions provider Return Path.

While clickbait subject lines like "you won't believe this shocking secret" are very successful at garnering Web traffic, they don't provide the same results via email. Specifically, the use of the phrase "secret of" in a subject line results in an 8.69 percent decrease in read rates...

Two nonprofit trusts created by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and financed with more than $40 million from ratepayers paid millions to vendors without competitive bids, overpaid top managers and let them charge personal travel, gasoline and other items without filing expense reports, city audits released Thursday showed.

In five years, a handful of trust employees charged more than $660,000 to their publicly financed credit cards for things such as steak dinners and trips to Las Vegas, Hawaii and New Orleans, city controller Ron Galperin said.

However, Galperin said, auditors did not find evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

My particular area of expertise is digital marketing, media and e-commerce. However, whilst I remain excited by what is possible with purely digital marketing, I am most intrigued by marketing that makes intelligent, creative and effective use of a mixture of media—multichannel or omnichannel marketing that choreographs an experience across touchpoints, both physical and digital.

You may have seen the recent campaign from MarketReach, the Royal Mail's direct marketing arm.

Whilst MarketReach itself is growing as a business, marketing spend on direct mail is falling year on year by around 5 percent, according to Ofcom figures...

Many nonprofit fundraising departments are dualistic in their setup. Usually I find that either they are direct-response driven or annual fund/event/major gift driven. (For simplicity, let's call this annual fund driven.) Both are wonderful—yet deeply flawed if one discipline significantly outweighs the other.