Equifax

Since spring is now officially here, what better time of year to clean out the virtual dust bunnies that have accumulated in your donor database? Your nonprofit is probably well into executing on its strategic plan for 2013, and you may have a good sense of your outreach needs as you gear up for the year-end giving crunch. Ensuring that your database is thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed is a critical, but often overlooked, success factor for nonprofits.

Grizzard Communications Group announced that the fundraising agency has hired Todd Bemis as digital creative director and strategist. Bemis brings almost 20 years of extensive agency experience leading design efforts for Fortune 100s and major international nonprofits to Grizzard. Bemis will focus on developing new digital products and offerings for Grizzard clients that help boost fundraising revenue, increase engagement and strengthen brands.

The Startup America Partnership, a nonprofit organization working with the government to fund innovation and create jobs, on Tuesday unveiled a new online platform and $330 million worth of product and service commitments designed to help early stage companies, CEO Scott Case told Reuters.

The platform was beta tested by several hundred companies for about a month, said Case, who aims to have more than 100,000 small businesses registered by the first quarter of 2012.

In one of the final sessions of the New York Nonprofit Conference, the presenters described three ways fundraisers can "think about taking calculated risks in these times" using analytics.

In every successful nonprofit organization, there is a small percentage of donors that will support it no matter what. Usually, these donors (who are called many things, but mostly “major”) can account for approximately 75 percent to 85 percent of the charity’s total revenue.