This is an exciting week! Later today there’s a free Q&A session with the authors of The Essential Fundraising Handbook for Small Nonprofits (you can register for the event on the book page: http://thenonprofitacademy.
Hope you can make it to one – or both – of those events!
Here’s my most liked quote of the week (based on the number of likes on my personal Facebook page):
In order to receive and appreciate the good things in life, you must first give. - Norman Vincent Peale
The Call of the Steward – Generosity to Your Cause – Webinar
Members’ Monthly Webinar with Dr. John R. Frank, CFRE, CCNL
Thursday, Feb. 20, 1:00 pm EST
This webinar will present how the steward is the key relationship in your development programs. The call of the steward is a philosophy that moves the development efforts from just raising money, to assisting stewards in achieving their giving goals.
Connecting stewards to the causes they care about (YOUR cause) is the key for the future of all nonprofits. We must move from getting money FROM donors, to creating ways for stewards to respond to THEIR call of generosity.
The webinar will offer the philosophy behind a stewardship focused development effort, as well as give specific strategies for implementation.
Awareness / Communications
- Three Free Tools to Boost Your Nonprofit Public Relations Unless you have a publicist, public relations strategies at small to medium nonprofits are often on the back burner. Here are some tools to help. @Socialbrite
- What You Need to Know to Launch a Grassroots-led Campaigns Platform Suddenly, platforms that allow anyone to start a petition and run their own campaigns are everywhere. But many are also asking what it takes to successfully run a grassroots-led campaigns platform. What lessons can we learn … @NTENorg
- Follow The Domain Formula For Donor Newsletters In the 1990s, a Seattle fundraising shop called the Domain Group took the garden-variety donor newsletter, stripped it down to its components, and began testing to see if they could come up with something better. Domain eventually developed a formula that made a donor newsletter HIGHLY worth doing… @BloomerangTech
- Add Value to Metrics Through Online Survey Tools Do you ever wonder what your donors are literally thinking? Which of your programs do they wish you focused more resources on? How well do they understand your mission? Surveys are a great way to gain insight… @stayclassysd
- Content Marketing: The One Difference You Need to Know The more quality content you share with your list, the more quality relationships you develop. The more quality relations you develop, the more sales (or donations) you make… @writtenbysumer
Fundraising
- I Can’t Thank You Enough! (Or Can I?) – #DonorLove How can you say thank you to donors, over and over again, without it feeling old and stale? Here are some ideas. @MCahalane
- Five philanthropic nudges: behavioural science insights that can steer donations Behavioral economics is a hot topic these days. In this article the author looks at various research findings… @thebearchitects via UK Fundraising
- Charitable Giving Report Shows Online Donations Increased by 13.5% The latest 2013 Charitable Giving Report by Blackbaud analyzed data from more than 4,000 nonprofits to provide the largest analysis in online giving data. According to the report, overall giving grew 4.9% in 2013 compared to 2012… @Care2Frogloop
- 3 Reports You Need To Have (Even If Your Software Doesn’t) Can you manage a nonprofit organization using just a balance sheet and income statement? All of our transactions will impact our balance sheet or income statement, but there are a number of different ways… @npENGAGE
- Donation Thank You Letter Template While an effective thank you letter isn’t the end-all, be-all solution to the donor retention problem, having a great thank you letter is a start. For first-time donors, the gift acknowledgement may be the first communication they receive from your organization. It’s important… @BloomerangTech
What Others are Doing
- Idiot Golf Tournament benefits Kansas City Hospice and Palliative Care On Saturday it was hard to spot much green on the golf course at Smiley’s Golf Complex, but there were some waddling penguins and superheroes and to be seen. It was the 11th Annual Idiots Open Golf Tournament benefitting Kansas City Hospice ... fox4kc.com via @AFPnet
- How Crowdfunding Can Be Used as a Community Development Tool It’s important to know about how nonprofit organizations are using crowdfunding, as well as what goals it can help them achieve. PBS via @AFPnet
- Nonprofits Put the “Creative” into Creative Reuse For a startup nonprofit in Charleston, S.C., crowdfunding, cross-sector collaboration, and creative reuse may prove to be a winning combination. @NPQuarterly
- How a Hospital Foundation Increased Giving to Its Newsletter by 1,000 Percent People from Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul, Minn., attended a Tom Ahern seminar. The old way, their donor newsletter received about $5,000 in gifts per issue. Post seminar, the foundation received about $50,000 ... @GuidestarUSA
Online / Technology
- 6 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Instagram for Fundraising Over time through powerful visual storytelling a nonprofit can build a strong brand and grow their Instagram following, but without the ability to link to a donate page inside of Instagram, it’s difficult … @nonprofitsorgs
- How to Create Nonprofit VIPs with Social Media Everybody wants to be a VIP. Take airlines for example. In May 1981, American Airlines launched the… @npENGAGE
- The Facebook Fraud and What It Means for Nonprofits 2014 has been off to a good for Facebook so far. Last week, it was announced that founder Mark Zuckerberg was the top philanthropist in 2013, having donated almost $1 billion. However… @BloomerangTech
- How to Do Keyword Research: A Beginner's Guide While Google's kept us on our toes with all those algorithm changes they keep rollin' out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize for search: keyword research. @hubspot
- 3 myths of email fundraising More and more people seem to think that fundraising can be done 100% online. They want help setting up a website and getting on social media. It's a digital version of the Field of Dreams Fundraising Myth. No one tool … @MarcAPitman
Leadership / Other
- Board Closes Agency—Or Maybe Not: Stakeholder Revolt The board of the Women’s Resource Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, closed the program on January 31 after 40 years, but former staff and supporters are now challenging that decision, saying that the bylaws were violated… @NPQuarterly
- Major Donor Has Remorse -- Nonprofit Board/CEO Failed to Meaningfully … After the gift is received, announced and celebrated, where does a nonprofit board and its management go from there? And whose job is it to see that the donor remains engaged and involved in the organization? @huffpostbiz
- Can We Move Beyond the Nonprofit Overhead Myth? Ever since last year’s Letter to the Donors of America there has been a growing movement to debunk the “nonprofit overhead myth.” We might get further focusing instead on the positive impact of organization building. @NEdgington
- The Art of Crafting a 15-Word Strategy Statement Here are some rules for avoiding common mistakes in strategy making. The first rule is “keep the strategy statement simple.” Rather than a long, often vague document… @HarvardBiz
- Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change Impact is a new leadership book about how to design creative and collaborative problem-solving sessions that meaningful engage cross-sector perspectives to tackle some of our most challenging issues. Drawing from social science research … @SSIReview
Don’t miss a single edition of Kirsten’s Fundraising Headlines! Sign up at: http://thenonprofitacademy.
