Ideas, insights and inspirations.

With Thanksgiving just behind us, like many nonprofits, colleges and universities, you’re probably getting ready to publish the annual “year-end giving” information on your website or send out an email appeal to prospective donors. If so, that’s great. If not… you’re missing a huge opportunity. Consider the following statistics: “The average person makes 24% of his/her annual donations between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.” Giving USA “One third (33%) of the donations made in the month of December occur on the 31st of the month.” Network for Good To get things going, here are my top 5 tips to jumpstart year-end giving… Plan ahead. Start your “ask” in November. Put that year-end giving information on your nonprofit website now. Thanksgiving starts the ball rolling. Don’t wait. Don’t hold it for December. Do it now. Mix it up. With everyone relying on email appeals, don’t forget to ask for a donation on social media, like Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Incorporate social links … Continue reading

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Gift development officers and nonprofit fundraisers are masters of being responsive to donors. However, there’s a new type of responsive philanthropy that you might not be thinking about — responsive website design (RWD). Don’t worry. We’re not going to get technical here. What most nonprofit fundraisers recognize is the significant migration to mobile (smartphones, tablets, etc.) that’s been happening over the past five years. This migration cuts across all segments of the population from high school students and business owners to retired seniors and mega-givers. In the mGive Text Donation Study 2013, which surveyed nearly 1 million text donors, mobile donating was found to be one of the top 3 choices across all age groups when participants were asked for their preferred method of charitable giving. As a result, nonprofits and philanthropy teams need to pay close attention to how their fundraising and volunteer recruiting website(s) play on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Some of you may even be … Continue reading

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Experienced non profit fundraisers will tell you there are many steps in planning a successful philanthropy campaign. For a large comprehensive or capital campaign, one of the more critical phases is the development of the case statement. The case statement plays a key role in articulating the rationale for fundraising and energizing gift officers and volunteers while laying a foundation for future donor conversations. The Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) lists the first three questions for making the case as: • Who is the organization and what does it do? • Why does it exist? • What is distinctive about the organization? Interestingly, these are very same questions marketers ask when defining the brand of a non profit institution or other organization. So, it stands to reason that if your organization’s brand has not been clearly articulated or crystallized prior to the planning of your next campaign, it may be difficult to outline the case for giving. Even more important … Continue reading

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I love ROI. You can probably tell from my Twitter handle: @LuvROI. Yet, we marketers don’t often push our metrics far enough to effectively measure ROI. I’m not talking about impressions, frequency, clicks and other traditional campaign measurements. Not at all. Rather, we should view marketing outcomes through the same revenue-focused lens used by senior management in any organization. Digital, social and mobile media (with related analytics) offer increasing opportunities to measure what’s really important to Boards, CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives. Sample Revenue Metrics Number/percentage of new prospects generated online? How engaged are prospects (using blogs, galleries, video, mobile apps, social sites and other measurements)? Percent increase/decrease? Number/percent increase/decrease in gifts made via web? Mobile? Social? Number/percent increase/decrease in average size of gift made via web? Mobile? Social? All this, and more, is possible… When I was a client of Elliance, one of the simplest (but most meaningful) things I ever did was share the “Hottest Prospects” reports … Continue reading

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