With the demand for content today, everyone is a writer. You can craft a whole sentence using emoticons 😎 and acronyms IMHO (in my humble opinion). But unambiguous writing requires a strong command of language. Good news: nonprofit writing tools can help you, whether you're a best-selling author or just [...]
How should you communicate with donors? Passionately! But I want you to think about this word from TWO perspectives: Your donor’s passions Your passions You see, even the most heartfelt fundraising appeal from you is not going to yield results if you send it to someone who doesn’t much care [...]
Important question, fundraiser. What portion of your job is communications? Answer: more than you probably realize. After all, two very large portions of the development cycle (cultivation and stewardship) involve a lot of communications. The nature and format of these communications can vary depending on whether you work with annual [...]
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 [...]