Tips about wildly successful fundraising and awareness strategies will continue to be culled from the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign for months to come. If you have passionate constituents, tasty pieces of breaking news can be effectively delivered to supporters’ cell phones, and you can leverage these numbers to activate your grassroots support — maybe even with mobile phone fundraising (“text to give”).
A recently released study by consulting group McKinsey & Co. for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation urges that if nonprofits, foundations and donors want to increase their social impact, they need a more robust marketplace of information about charitable activity.
Most organizations fail to use Internet communications to cultivate and engage middle and major donors — an expensive omission. That’s the key finding from a landmark study of the “wired wealthy” released last year by Sea Change Strategies, Edge Research and Convio.
It’s ugly out there. And if you’re the pilot of your fundraising endeavors, you’re getting pretty sick of the turbulence. Many of us are nauseated by the sight of the goals on our development dashboards. Some nonprofits are in a fiscal nosedive. And as any financial pundit worth his market metaphors will tell you, falling is no fun, especially without a golden parachute.
If you’ve checked your 401(k) balance lately, you might have tasted that metallic tang in the back of your mouth that signals raw, animal fear. It’s not a nice feeling. It’s a feeling that can make you want to do something wild, like grab what’s left of your money and hide it in your mattress.
Don’t. Trust me — it’s totally uncomfortable. And the Mattress Plan is going to play even worse havoc with your retirement than the economy has.
At the end of this month, we will witness one of the biggest transformations in our country’s history when Barack Obama steps in as the first black president of the United States. Obama’s election represents a sea change for our country in race relations. It also represents a sea change in marketing, communications and fundraising for success.
When fundraisers are ineffective, it’s almost always because they are the victims of their own mental habits. These bad habits are more harmful than lack of resources, bad economic times or even stupidity. Conquer these habits, and you’ll raise a lot more money. Bad Habit No. 1: Being ashamed of fundraising It’s odd, but many professional fundraisers have an insidious belief that asking people for money is annoying, embarrassing or disrespectful. This puts them in confusing territory, where they need their donors to fund vital programs — but they don’t want to admit it. That bends their fundraising messages into pretzel shapes that
To hear some fundraisers talk, you might think donors are so fragile they have to be handled with exaggerated care lest they disappear in a puff of acrid smoke. To avoid that, you walk around on tiptoes, not daring to speak to them too often (or too emphatically) because they might “burn out.”
A few months ago, I saw a full-spread, anti-slave labor ad that featured shackled hands, one on each side of the two pages. Attaching them was a strip of paper that formed a chain holding the pages together. It was an arresting image that seized my attention. Then it got even better. It got interactive.
Our researchers here at the Easier Said Than Done Pavilion and Golf Course have turned their considerable skills to predicting your future. To discover what’s ahead for your nonprofit organization in 2008, simply match the year of your founding with its Chinese zodiac symbol. (See the paper place mats at your local Chinese restaurant if you don’t know which years go with which creatures.) Year of the RAT Your organization will become infested with vice presidents. Most of them will be harmless, genial types who make excellent lunch companions. One of them, however, will have an addiction to massive, organization-wide initiatives that are meant
