Charleston, S.C., August 31, 2009 — Blackbaud, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLKB), the leading global provider of software and related services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations, today announced that the University of Michigan, one of the world’s premiere research universities, has selected Blackbaud Enterprise CRM™ and Target Analytics® to replace its system-wide fundraising technology and prospect research services.
August 24, 2009, Crain's Chicago Business — Fundraising has been called an art and a science, but, most of all, it's a crapshoot.
STANFORD, Calif., August 25, 2009 — Charities and nonprofits are suffering as much as commercial businesses from the economic downturn. Donations at two-thirds of public charities declined between 2007 and 2008, according to the Giving USA Foundation. This represents the first decrease in donations in current dollars since 1987, and only the second in year-by-year giving slump since the organization began publishing its annual reports 52 years ago.
The more you know about your lapsed donors — their characteristics, interests and relationships to your organization — the better prepared you are to recapture these donors or, more importantly, prevent them from lapsing in the first place. Prevention is perhaps the strongest strategy in addressing lapsed-donor issues. Consider the following when developing your donor-retention strategy:
The population of the U.S. is becoming more diverse, making it more and more imperative that nonprofits create messaging that's relevant to multicultural audiences to engage them as donors, volunteers and allies. This was the focus of the session "Multicultural Resource Development: Effective Practices to Broaden Your Donor Base" at the 2009 Bridge Conference held just outside D.C. last week.
We’ve been hard at work here at Easier Said Than Done Laboratories on the holy grail of fundraising — a new Unified Theory of Fundraising. I’m happy to announce some breakthrough discoveries: Three Laws of Fundraising Dynamics that will give you the theoretical platform for great fundraising.
Remember the story of the boy in Holland who noticed a hole in the dike? Fearing a leak could flood the entire town, he shoved his finger into the hole, potentially avoiding a major disaster.
Face it … not everyone cares about your cause — and there’s not much you can do about it.
"There are always going to be people that are more interested in shoe shopping than what you have to say," says Kivi Leroux Miller.
Fundraisers often ask, “Why should I spend time working with young donors?”
In response, I often challenge them to perform a simple test: analyzing the age of their current donor base. If they’re like many organizations, they’ll find a significant number of donors age 40 and older.
We’re living in a networked society where people are interested in making a real difference by doing things through their own, self-selected communities — online and offline. This according to Bryan Miller, head of strategy and consumer insight at Cancer Research UK, who presented the session "Community Fundraising 2.0: The Future of Fundraising in Our Networked Society" at the first International Fundraising eConference May 12 to 14.
