Year-end giving presents an extraordinary time for nonprofits to raise more money from individual donors than any other point in the year. It is also a time when fundraisers get too creative arguably, on the wrong things – and consequently spend too little time on the right things. A quick [...]
In my last posts, I walked through the factors that should be considered to create your year-end fundraising goal, and followed-up with a practical strategy to level-up results by expanding your army of front-line fundraisers with volunteers. Now it’s time to consider message and channel – and who is going [...]
Here’s one little ‘trick’ to vastly improve your fundraising this year. You’re going to think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I could give you lots of tips and tools to improve your year-end fundraising success (and feel free to grab some here), but if you do nothing else but this [...]
Email solicitations continue to be effective, accounting for 28% of all online revenue (Nonprofits Source). However, the average office worker receives over 120 emails per day (The Radicadi Group), so how do you cut through the clutter? As a former development team member myself, I’m much more critical of solicitations [...]
My husband and I recently returned from an amazing trip to Ireland. Along with a group of 22 friends, we traveled near Galway through 8 small towns in 8 days — all on bikes. The scenery was breathtaking and the Irish people were completely charming. We averaged 30 miles a [...]
Someone recently asked me what I think is the most common mistake made in fundraising appeals. I had an immediate answer. Most fundraising appeals lack a theory of change. Theory of change isn’t something we talk a lot about in fundraising and yet it plays a crucial role in helping [...]
The “email welcome series” is a frequently-recommended tactic for communicating with new donors while saving staff time in the process. The idea being that when a donor makes their first gift, they're queued up to receive a series of emails (three, five, etc.) over a period of time (a few [...]
I’m here with some truth bombs. “The season to give is not a reason to give.” Want the #1 way to ensure your donors give and give generously to your cause this holiday season? Tell them now what kind of impact their most recent gift had. Tell them even if [...]
Imagine this scenario: Your organization received a donation from a donor once or twice but have not received anything this year. Some nonprofit professionals may say well that donor is gone, time to find a new one. WRONG! Studies show that it costs less to retain, or re-engage, a lapsed [...]
Think about how you get more people to open a direct mail piece. It begins with the outer envelope. It really doesn't matter what's inside, if people aren't moved to open the envelope. The same holds true with an email appeal. In this case, your email envelope is the subject [...]
In Not Using Content Marketing Wisely? Your Nonprofit’s Leaving Money on the Table I defined ‘content marketing’ so you could better understand the centrality of this concept to the success of your overall fundraising and marketing communications strategy. We talked about how to create a nonprofit content marketing plan, and [...]
Let’s begin by defining ‘content marketing’ so you better understand how central this concept is to the success of your overall fundraising and marketing communications strategy. [Emphases below are my own.] Wikipedia says “Content marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content. Content [...]