You’ve got questions about nonprofit SWOT analyses; we’ve got answers! Specifically, these are questions we didn’t have time to answer in a webinar I recently presented for Bloomerang: “SWOT’s Up? How to Do a Strategic Self-Audit of Nonprofit Strengths & Weaknesses." In the webinar, we covered What a SWOT accomplishes [...]
What’s in a nonprofit brand? Everything. Think about the most popular and well-known charities. What comes to mind? I’ll bet you’re able to envision who they are, why they do what they do, and what they do in an instant. For example, Charity: water. The ASPCA. The ACLU. Red Cross. [...]
Divide and conquer may be a good strategy on the battlefield. For nonprofit fundraising, not so much. If you want to succeed with donor-centered communications you need to stop fighting and start inviting. I mean this in two important ways: Stop fighting donors by trying to ‘hit them up’ and [...]
What’s on your integrated development (marketing + fundraising) plan for the coming year? Major individual gift fundraising? Annual fundraising direct mail? Recurring gift fundraising and/or memberships? E-appeals? Telemarketing? Foundation grant research, writing and reporting? Government grant research, writing and reporting? Business sponsorships? Legacy/planned giving fundraising? Capital/endowment campaign? Special events? A [...]
Nonprofits turn to awareness campaigns to increase their visibility and ride the wave of relevancy, often as part of designated awareness weeks and months. While there’s some good advice out there for putting together a campaign that drives people to act, the traditional marketing funnel is failing us when it [...]
If you’re looking for creative ways to broaden the reach and appeal of your fundraising campaigns, cause marketing presents exciting possibilities. From charity events to buy-one-get-one campaigns, cause marketing can invigorate your fundraising efforts and bring in new donors and dollars for mission. A successful partnership leverages the best of [...]
Recently I spoke with a woman who wanted to increase awareness of her nonprofit. “Sara” spoke with passion about all the good work her organization does, but complained that no one knows about them. (Another one of those “best kept secret” organizations!) Sara mentioned several ideas she wants to implement [...]
Nonprofit leaders don’t usually like to talk about the Form 990. Every time I bring it up and my eyes light up, their smiles turn down and a sick look comes over their face. I completely understand. It’s a tedious form with dozens of confusing schedules, half of which aren’t [...]
There’s a good reason why videos are increasingly popular. They’re easy to consume and they can be inexpensive to make. You can do a lot armed with just a smartphone. You don’t need an expensive crew, equipment, and studio to produce a decent-quality video. Three Steps to Scripting a Memorable [...]
There’s no free lunch anymore, if there ever was. At least not when it comes to social media. In the early days it may have seemed like “free marketing” – no stamps, no paper, no printing – but it always took time. So even then you may have been kidding [...]
My first trip outside the United States probably ruined me for “normal” travel. I had an opportunity to work in Kuwait out of college and I took it. Little did I know that experience would whet my appetite for a lifetime of travel to, let’s say … different places. To [...]
It’s no secret that most online users have the attention span of a goldfish nowadays, and creating engaging content can be a difficult endeavor. In lieu of dedicating time to other media or doing a trial-and-error based approach to content creation, your organization needs to utilize video to stand out [...]