Fundraising

Your nonprofit’s Board of Directors sets the direction of the entire organization. While the board’s primary duties include ensuring that the nonprofit’s funds actually further its charitable purpose, it also makes financial decisions on new programs, technology, and fundraising expenses. At the same time, your nonprofit’s employees and volunteers look to the board for the materials, technology, and approval to conduct their solicitation activities. Any real or perceived disconnect between board and staff can affect your whole nonprofit’s fundraising success! Bridging that gap begins with charitable solicitation (aka fundraising) compliance. Currently, forty-four states have laws surrounding a nonprofit’s charitable solicitation activities, [...]

  "Causes brings over 140 million people together to form the world's largest giving community. The belief that everyone has something to give is at the core of what we do; people just need a little inspiration, and to know that whoever they are, there is something meaningful they can do." -Joe Green, Causes.com   Box Tops for Education, TOMS Shoes, and Live Strong are a few of the most popular cause marketing campaigns today. They are great campaigns that help organizations and others in need. But what exactly is cause marketing?   In ReDefining Cause Marketing, Selfish Giving defines cause [...]

This post was originally published to Amy Eisenstein's blog and is being shared here, with her permission. Red flags are often used as a sign of warning or danger. Unfortunately, most red flags are not literal, but figurative, and are often missed by the people who need them most. Once you know the red flags of major gift fundraising, they might be easier to identify and tackle. Here are the top red flags to watch for at your organization. Once you eliminate these red flags, you’ll be ready to raise major gifts in a major way.   1. The development director [...]

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the 2015 Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference. The session “Who Should You Love Most? Your Donors, Your Members or Your Subscribers” drew a great crowd – all ready to learn how to leverage their donor, member and/or subscriber base to raise the most revenue.   Now this is a topic that is dear to me – because as membership director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, I think about it every day! Even though my focus is primarily on building and stewarding our member base, members and subscribers and donors are [...]

Imagine having the ability to get in touch with your supporters in the following ways: Automatically send an email to constituents on their birthday. Trigger a series of timed welcome emails to a donor after the first time they give. Test two different subject lines with a small group, then automatically have the winning subject line be used in the email to the full group of recipients. Create an email once, but have it send slightly different content to different segments of users. That’s marketing automation. But it doesn’t stop there. Marketing automation is about managing all of your constituent data [...]

Do you remember the classic game of operation? It tested many a child and parent's hand-eye coordination and nerve. Players take turns using a pair of tweezers to attempt to remove items from the board without touching the metal sides. Just the smallest touch and a buzz signals the end of your tun. A big fundraising ask isn't that different. One slip up and you could blow it. But if you understand what your audience is looking for and how to best go about asking for donations you'll be that much better off. NonprofitHub created this great infographic to help you [...]