Yesterday I taught a webinar with our training partner CharityHowTo.com called “How to Create a Nonprofit Annual Report People Will Actually Read.” At the beginning of the webinar I surveyed the participants (about 80 people) about the format of their last annual report. I teach this webinar several times a year and these are…
In yesterday’s post, I told you that I suspect that the reason online givers seem to be one-hit-wonders has less to do with online givers being fickle and more with nonprofits not yet figuring out how to do online donor retention well. I promised to share what happened when I gave online gifts to 20 national…
You may be wondering why online fundraising seems to work so great for a few organizations and really poorly for others. And you may have heard that online givers are flaky or fickle, which was reinforced by Blackbaud’s research that concluded that online-acquired donors are more valuable in the long-term than traditional mail-acquired donors, but only…
Welcome to Mixed Links! Engagement (or as Claire would say, “Getting peeps talking”) Does your nonprofit know the difference between documentation and communication? Make sure you do in Stop Documenting. Start Communicating. Getting people on your email list is very important, but so is what you do after you get them there. Katya Andresen shares…
Last week, I asked for your thoughts on how your newsletter has changed, including how your organization’s use of social media has affected your newsletter, whether print or online. Of the 299 people who had answered this particular question when I pulled the data yesterday, a third said that social media had little to no…
As part of my webinar “So What and Who Cares: How to Make Your Messaging More Meaningful and Memorable,” I share this quick checklist to help ensure that your messages are as relevant as possible.
As graphic design expert Julia Reich said in a guest post she did for us last year, People are passionate and loyal to brands they feel connected to, and that doesn’t just apply to coffee and sneakers, it’s relevant to nonprofit brands too. Loyalty leads to increased awareness, participation, and donations. A logo, as the visual representation…
You’ve probably been cautioned to avoid using social media as a fundraising tool and to focus instead on donor “engagement” – which will someday lead to fundraising opportunities. But when? What about all of those nonprofits using social media to raise money right now? Can you create a social media strategy that does both? I…
Happy Friday everyone! Join me for some Mixed Links . . . Constant Contact released results from their 2012 Nonprofit Pulse Survey. The survey findings are consistent with what we found in our own Nonprofit Communications Trends Report: nonprofits are concerned about finding and connecting with supporters, and are excited about the role of social media…
Social media is ALL about listening, but trying to hear your name being called amid the noise can be difficult. The popular social media app Hootsuite can help. The following video shows you how you can hear if people are tweeting about you (even if they don’t know your Twitter handle), your cause or anything…
When I first started working in nonprofit communications, the job was really all about the newsletter. The nonprofit newsletter, first in print and then in email, was the mainstay of communications between the nonprofit and its supporters. More than any other piece of communications, the newsletter consumed a lot of staff time and energy, not…
No, this isn’t a post about trampoline as an Olympic sport (I don’t get it, personally). It is a post about finding the thing(s) that help you be more creative, break through the blahs, and otherwise deal with writer’s block, procrastination or other things getting in the way of getting it done. When I am…
