All Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising Articles
5 Mistakes You’re Making with Donors … That Have an Easy Fix!
During a recent one-on-one meeting with my our Content Marketer at Food for the Hungry, we were talking about value proposition and reviewing a proposed project. I made a comment that would have led the piece away from being donor focused and our Content Marketer calmly corrected my proposed change. It’s amazing how easy it … Read more
3 Keys to Moving from Corporate America to a Nonprofit
In 2011, I was working as a social media consultant, primarily with nonprofits with Tim Smith approached me about joining him at Food for the Hungry. He had just accepted the role of Chief Development Officer and wanted to bring me along as his Digital Director. Though I had worked at a nonprofit and worked … Read more
Secrets to Being a Successful Storyteller
Liko loved school. He had dreams of graduating, getting a good job, helping to lift his family out of generations of poverty. But one day, tragedy struck. The village borehole water pump broke. Clean water was no longer available. The school’s feeding program shut down. The school itself closed. Village residents suddenly had to travel 13 … Read more
3 Steps to Clarity in Your Fundraising
When a donor receives a request for funds, he is looking for a clear answer to questions about your appeal. Providing clear structure and answers in your fundraising appeal will increase the likelihood of achieving your goals. Learn these 3 steps to clarify your fundraising.
YOU Can Be a GREAT Fundraiser!
Fundraising has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of any job I’ve ever had. It’s not hard to be motivated to come to work every day knowing that what I’m doing is making a different in literally millions of people’s lives. I am motivated knowing that Nadine, a 9 year old, received deworming medication and … Read more
Validate Your Email List
“What happened to the deliverability on our monthly email newsletter? It appears we missed 35% of inboxes. Can you check to see if these numbers are correct?” Robert asked his new email marketing analyst, Todd. A few minutes later Todd came into Robert’s office. “I made a big mistake. I imported the entire donor database … Read more
Painful Suggestions by People Who Don’t Understand Fundraising
Yes, it’s well intentioned. Yes, like many professions, people assume fundraising is easier than it actually is. And yes, it’s head-shakingly-funny some of the suggestions people make to fundraisers about how to do their jobs. Here’s a few of the funniest, unfortunately too common, suggestions people make to nonprofit development teams on how to improve … Read more
20+ Resources for Building a Nonprofit Persona
I recently asked one of my staff members after a year on the job what she wished she knew about nonprofit fundraising before joining us. She had extensive corporate and agency digital marketing experience, but working at a nonprofit was new for her. Her first response? She wishes she understood more about our persona and … Read more
How to Double Your Donations
Let’s focus on changing one thing in our donation funnel that doubles our conversation rate of donors. By changing just one metric – improving it through testing – we can double the number of people giving digitally.
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Trackable Links for Google Analytics
Key to measuring results is knowing how people came to your website. You can create trackable links using 5 different types of tags and measure the impact of different sources, mediums, and ads on your landing pages. Get the most from your marketing spend by carefully tracking how people reach your content with this video tutorial.
Facebook Photo Posts No Longer King
Facebook continues to update their post algorithm and for a long time photo posts performed the best of all post types. Marketers quickly identified this trend and started moving many of their post types to photo posts. This has resulted in a glut of photo posts and Facebook has altered the algorithm once again and … Read more
How important are your organizational celebrations?
Does the anniversary of when your organization was founded matter? Is your year end fundraising (not calendar year) important to the donor? In other words, if your fiscal year ends September 30, will a donor actually be motivated to give? We know donors care about calendar year end giving for tax reasons, but why should they … Read more