Category: fundraising

This is a guest post by Erica Waasdorp

Are fewer people attending your events these days? Are you hoping to dramatically increase attendance at your big conference this year? Rather than relying mostly on email blasts, word-of-mouth, and social media posts, many organizations are turning to Facebook ads to fill up their events. Advertising on Facebook works well for event promotion for two reasons: You can have your ad pop up in the Facebook feeds of everyone in your network. You can promote your event to new audiences that wouldn’t be possible through other channels. If you’re new to creating Facebook ads, here are the five best practices for boosting event attendance. 1) Why You Need to Crunch the Numbers? The biggest mistake...

This is a guest blog post by Brian Saber, Cofounder of Asking Matters. If we think we can send board members out to fundraise without giving them tools, we might need some analysis. What are we thinking?! It’s a license for complete failure, and the proof is in the pudding. Time and again our board members fail to partner successfully with staff to develop the organization’s resources because we never show them how or provide the training. But They’re So Successful! Yes, we ask people to join our boards because we think highly of them. They might be successful businesspeople or impassioned community activists or enthusiastic volunteers. They might be articulate believers or prominent...

This is a guest blog post by Julia Campbell

This is a guest blog post by Erica Waasdorp How long does it typically take to set up a monthly donor program? From soup to nuts. At a recent webinar, I was asked the above question. The answer is: if you focus on it, you should be able to be up and running within a week. I realize that development people in small to mid-size organizations especially are always pulled in multiple directions and distractions are easy. That’s why I recommend you don’t launch the program until you have thought through and put in place the basics. But with a little bit of focus that can be done in a few days. You most likely have the systems already in place. Brainstorming about a name for a program can be done...

This post was a collaborative piece written by John Haydon, A.j. Steinberg, and Jeff Brooks.

This a guest blog post by Kathie Kramer Ryan, founder of Arroyo Fundraising Would you ask someone to marry you on your first date? Chances are, no way! It’s just as unlikely that you—as a development professional—would ask a prospect to make a major gift to your organization during your first meeting. If you are planning or implementing a major gifts program, it’s a great time to review these 4 Steps to Fundraising Success. Step #1: Identify First, you’ll want to identify prospects who have the potential to become donors to your organization. Prospects may include friends and colleagues of your current donors, board members, committee members and other stakeholders. Consider former board...

Corporations invest in social responsibility programs and activities to support their triple bottom line: people, profits, and the planet. Companies are smart to be concerned about corporate social responsibility (CSR), both because CSR is a driver among consumer groups and because some labels— think “organic,” “recycled,” “smaller carbon footprint”— are generally more costly for companies to attain, thereby reducing shareholder profitability. A corporation’s long-term success is based on its ability to balance the vision against the interests of key stakeholder groups. As a for-profit company, my company–JustWrite Solutions–considers these questions all the time. We have a formal CSR...

Blog Post by Heather Stombaugh Strategies and tactics in fundraising may change, but print publications continue to be a critical resource in the nonprofit toolbox. According to Kivi Leroux Miller’s 2016 Nonprofit Communication Trends report, print remains one of the top five most important communication channels in the nonprofit sector. Image Credit: Kivi Leroux Miller Every nonprofit should invest in creating compelling fundraising publications. However, in the tumult of other pressing needs, many small nonprofits put off developing their annual reports, cases for support, and other collateral to save money. Let me put this simply: in ANY business, you must spend money to make money....

Step 1 – Strategizing Our case study is about Save The Redwoods and their mission is to protect and restore Redwood forests. To help fulfill this mission, we wanted to reach out to their target audience, i.e. people concerned about the Redwood forests, for support.

By A.J. Steinberg

We’re big believers in the power of monthly donors. We have been managing monthly donor programs for decades and have seen the ongoing revenue it provides, especially in times of crisis. In some cases, it’s kept organizations afloat; even if they could not send appeals to ask for money, the monthly donations kept the funds coming in. That’s why we maintain that every organization can (and should) organize a monthly giving program. A few years ago when we first started teaching webinars at CharityHowTo, monthly giving was still in its infancy and was used primarily by larger organizations. But today, monthly giving is becoming more and more popular. With the right tools — which you may very...

I love teaching the Annual Reports webinars for CharityHowTo’s participants (How to Create an Awesome Annual Report and How to Transition Your Annual Report to an Infographic). Professionals who attend and engage have excellent questions, constructive ideas for others, and thoughtful approaches to serving their donors. And fundraising publications are one of my favorite topics in development. Sure, as a professional writer, I’m biased, but every nonprofit needs them and (should) use collateral all the time! While I know the folks who attend these webinars benefit from the conversation, I have also noticed a big problem. I receive A LOT of emails from potential participants who are...

You’ve seen them all over the interwebs. You run into them as you’re scrolling through your feed on Facebook, as you’re checking your Twitter updates, as you’re looking for remodeling ideas on Pinterest. They’re infographics, and they’re everywhere. But more importantly for nonprofits: infographics (and other data visualization tools) are not a passing trend. It’s time you add them to your fundraising toolbox. Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. Other data visualization tools—like charts, graphs, pictograms, gauges, dashboards, etc.—similarly present data in a pictorial or graphic...

We recently hosted the webinar “Raising More Money with Event Sponsorship – A New Approach That Works!” by Joe Waters, author of Cause Marketing for Dummies. Here are some great tips Joe gave on how to partner with businesses to raise money for your nonprofit.