Philip King

We didn’t call it “peer-to-peer fundraising” at first. Back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, some of us were excited by the prospect of bringing traditional fundraising activities online. One of the big areas of focus was the pledge-based special event. Historically, these campaigns occurred offline using just pens, paper pledge-forms, cash and checks.…

For those of us who have been in the technology industry for some time, Mary Meeker is a household name. Her annual reports about internet trends have been the go-to source for those trying to anticipate what will happen next with e-commerce, online advertising and internet usage, in general. She published her first report in…

In a recent article for Social Media Examiner, author Zoe Summers outlined some ways businesses can use social listening. Many of her ideas can be applied directly to nonprofits. I’ve adapted four of them here...

Netflix released its quarterly report in April, and its stock plummeted 10 percent. That’s what happens when stocks fly so high: Even 
the slightest hint of bad news triggers a sell-off. Bear in mind that most of the quarterly report was positive. Netflix added 6.74 million new subscribers to bring it’s total to 81.5 million global customers. That’s 31 percent more than a year ago. And now, 42 percent of Netflix customers reside outside of the U.S...

Many of you are planning to redesign your websites in the near future, and it is to this part of the audience I would like to direct this article. On my last flight, I was seated near a young woman who must have been about 20 years old. As you may guess, she spent most…

Introduced in 2009, the "Like" button has been one of the most recognizable aspects of life on Facebook. After reading a post, I could like, comment or share. Now, with the "Reactions" Facebook introduced earlier this year, I have a choice of six emoticons: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry...

Let's talk about passion, specifically, what it means for nonprofits and their online relationships. When you consider your organization’s online community, you may think of your social-media groups. For a long time, there has been a push to develop as many relationships as possible...

Did you order anything from Amazon this past holiday season? Are you already an Amazon Prime Member, along with 25 percent of all American households? You may be one of the 3 million new Prime members Amazon added during the third week of December alone. This month’s column is devoted to Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos’s winning playbook, and which pages nonprofits can take for their own success in 2016...

As your organization continues to find new ways to interact with your audience online, it’s important to be aware of tools that can help you build an effective prospect list. Facebook Login is an example of a new tool that you can use for your website, mobile app or Wi-Fi at a physical event. But just because you can ask for this information doesn’t mean you should...

Since nonprofits don’t have a tangible product to sell, storytelling becomes that much more important. I like to think about online advertising as online storytelling. Our goal is to get a click, or a view, or a like. We have to tell a short-but-catchy story to get someone’s attention...

In the early 2000s, we didn’t call it “P2P.” We called it “online event management solutions” or “online solutions for pledge-based special events.” Some of us had noticed that nonprofits gained a lot of their annual support through these pledge-based special events, and many were still using paper pledge forms to walk around and ask for donations. The world has changed significantly since then, particularly when it comes to communications technology...

There is a worrying trend that may sound familiar to some of you: Fundraising event revenue online is down in the first half of 2015 versus the same time last year. Not in all cases of course, but in enough situations to warrant a discussion. Some of the data I have examined tell a pretty clear story. As audience shifts from desktop to mobile, the average gift online is declining. So even though there are more donations, the overall revenue is less than 
the same time period last year. What’s going on here...

Blackbaud’s 2014 Charitable Giving Report found that online giving grew almost five times faster than overall giving, which grew at 2.1 percent, while online giving grew at 8.9 percent. Compare this to your online fundraising totals. Are you around the 7 percent mark? Are you growing your online fundraising by 8 percent to 10 percent compared to last year...

Data silos make it hard to manage across an organization. They are barriers to a single view of a donor. But for many fundraising teams this situation is the reality of life today. Given that multiple technology systems led to these silos, how can you use technology to improve this situation? You’ve heard the phrase “what gets measured gets managed.” This is particularly true for fundraising teams...

Your mobile website is a chance to reinvent yourself. How long have you looked at your desktop website wishing things could be different? Take a mobile-first attitude and use your mobile website to experiment with ideas that can make your existing desktop website more contemporary.