NonProfit Pro

As leaders, we often need to spend a lot of time dealing with abstract issues, such as policies, strategies, financials, goals or customer data. If we aren't careful, we can begin to think that it is in these areas where leadership lies. But an organization is made up of people. These individuals determine its success or failure, and as their leaders, we have to think first about the people we lead.

Change equals opportunity. And with opportunity, great things are possible. That's why FundRaising Success had to become NonProfit PRO.

From this day on, we are retiring the FS name and rebranding as NonProfit PRO. Why? Because just as fundraisers must keep up with the times on channels, donor preferences and technology, we must keep with the trends in the nonprofit sector.

Answer these questions and take your nonprofit's corporate volunteer program to the next level!

Lisa Mummert, senior account executive for Image Source Inc. in Santa Rosa, Calif., shared a promotion she and a winery created to support Murphy-Goode Operation Homefront, an organization that provides financial and practical aid to veterans in need. They sent thank-you bundles to veterans that included USBs loaded with information about Operation Homefront.

Each year, Nonprofit Marketing Guide President Kivi Leroux Miller and her team release the Nonprofit Communications Trends Report. The 2015 report, released in January, has more than a few interesting findings, perhaps the biggest being that donor retention surpassed acquisition as a goal for the first time in five years. Here are some other noteworthy findings from the report, which was fully completed by 1,535 nonprofits.

Right before the end-of-year fundraising push, Blackbaud's Brandon Granger examined 105 nonprofit websites to glean data on if responsive design raises more money for nonprofit organizations.

A federal judge handed open-records activist Carl Malamud a victory in his battle to get the Internal Revenue Service to release Form 990 tax returns in a format that can be read by computers, thus making information about nonprofit operations far more accessible. U.S. District Judge William Orrick rejected the IRS's argument that producing the documents requested by Malamud's group, Public.Resource.Org, would create a significant burden on an overstretched agency.

Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R., Texas) office called for an investigation on Thursday into the State Department’s funding of a nonprofit group that is assisting a campaign aimed at defeating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The OneVoice Movement, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that is partnering with the V15 effort to oust Netanyahu in Israel’s March elections, received two grants from the State Department in the past year.

An Orgeon nonprofit saw its funding from the state of Oregon soar eightfold the year it put First Lady Cylvia Hayes on the payroll. Hayes only lasted in the job a few months, and right after she left, Gov. John Kitzhaber's administration cut state payments to the group to almost nothing. State records show that the nonprofit, Rural Development Initiatives, saw its state funding grow from $25,000 in 2010 to more than $214,000 in 2011, the year Hayes went to work there. RDI saw its state funding fall to just $2,500 the year after Hayes left.