Jeff Patrick

Listen as Jeff Patrick, president and founder of Common Knowledge, talks about a magic formula for donor cultivation; and Luke Vander Linden, vice president of integrated marketing services for Carl Bloom Associates, discusses rebranding.

Hear Jeff Patrick, president and founder of Common Knowledge, talk about a magic formula for donor cultivation, which he presented a session on at the 2009 Bridge Conference held just outside of Washington, D.C., in late July.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 28, 2009 — Co-sponsors ThePort Network, Inc. (www.theport.com), NTEN (www.nten.org), and Common Knowledge (www.commonknow.com) released today results of the nonprofit industry's first-ever survey examining the use of social networking as a marketing and fundraising channel. Conducted earlier this year, the survey polled 978 nonprofit professionals about their organizations' use of commercial social networking sites, as well as their own hosted social networking communities.

As nonprofits escalate their focus on the Internet for fundraising and base-building, there is, increasingly, a recognition that the online channel can be a constituent-friendly, cost-effective means of building relationships and raising money from individuals. New online fundraising programs, however, bring new challenges: * How to acquire new constituents? * How to cultivate this virtual constituent community? * How to produce fundraising revenue (quickly)? * How to reduce the payback period for the program investment? For nonprofits with growing online fundraising programs, there is a similar set of challenges: * How to continue to grow the base? * How to keep program

Unlike offline DRM, online donor cultivation doesn’t begin until donors opt in to receive communications from you. From that point forward, organizations should begin the process of fostering a two-way communication with constituents — meaning the collected set of people who donate, volunteer, serve on the board, or benefit from the services of your organization — and make efforts to understand how to get them involved, says Jeff Patrick, president of Common Knowledge, a Dallas-based consulting firm that provides services that help nonprofits use the Internet to fundraise, advocate, market and communicate to constituents.