Thursday, July 8th, 2010
My nonprofit fundraising and communications experience has been grounded primarily in the world of advocacy organizations, as opposed to mainstream charities focused on health research, education and the like. And more narrowly still, advocacy of the center-liberal persuasion. For groups like ... Read more
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
Having just watched The Netherlands eliminate Uruguay (justice being served IMHO), I moved on to reading fundraiser Mal Warwick’s latest newsletter. In particular, an article by Tom Ahern titled We don’t care what our donors think of us caught my eye. Tom talks about a recent ... Read more
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
The recent e-letter of donor loyalty specialist Lisa Sargent describes how the Atlanta Union Mission builds relationships with its donors. AUM provides emergency food and shelter, residential recovery programs and transitional housing for men, women and children. Lisa’s article focuses on ... Read more
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
I was intrigued by this discussion in Online Spin of “impulse” versus “considered” purchases in the consumer space. The author discusses this distinction in the context of what — and how much — an online pitch, ad or offer can accomplish in those two different ... Read more
Monday, June 21st, 2010
If your data indicates that most of your small gift income still comes from direct mail, and you think most of your donors are over fifty years old, but you sense more and more online interaction with your donors is happening (and more is possible), then whose online practices might you pay special ... Read more
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Ricky Van Veen started College Humor in his dorm room. The website now has 10,000,000 unique visitors a month, and his company produces TV shows, films, live tours and books. [Another one of those guys we love to hate!] In this article, 10 Web Content Urban Legends, he shares his thoughts on ... Read more
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
In the case of many non-profits the much-vaunted “Fundraising Pyramid” too often resembles an hourglass. Fat on the ends, skinny in the middle. So I was particularly pleased to see Nicole Wallace over at the Chronicle of Philanthropy recently tackle the subject of middle donor or mid-level ... Read more
Friday, June 4th, 2010
Yesterday, in the course of making some comments about raising money from Boomers, I published this chart estimating the number of individuals in each cohort prepared by The Boomer Project. Today I want to make a different point about this chart. Today there are already more than twice as many ... Read more
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
I was reading this article on effective email messaging, the gist of which was … make it relevant via personalization. Now there are a variety of ways to personalize, especially in (but not limited to) the online environment — using the donor’s location to tailor content, keying ... Read more
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
Last week, in a piece entitled Is Your Favorite Charity Spying on You?, the Wall Street Journal’s “Smart Money” column set off a mini-firestorm in our trade over the use of data mining for prospect research and donor analytics. Among the tidbits of raw meat tossed into the WSJ piece ... Read more
