NonProfit Pro

Instead of fitting donors to your programs, focus upon creating a seamless path for donors to grow in your organization. Identify and reinforce those donor values that support your efforts. Help your investors to give as it is appropriate for them. Encourage them to invest as it fits their particular situations in life — whether that's general cash giving, higher cash giving, gifts of assets ("major gifts"), planned gifts (simply "major gifts" that have an additional external donor motive along with a deferred payment schedule) or even through a capital campaign.

For those of us who are tasked with providing information that encourages giving, the right story can make our jobs go from impossible to possible. So how do we get those compelling examples that help our donors and prospects grasp the importance of the work we do? Following are things that I have found can make my task as a copywriter a joy — or a job.

Tweets from the Direct Marketing Association's Email Evolution Conference 2015 (#eec15).

(Press release, Feb. 4, 2015) — The MacArthur Foundation named nine organizations as recipients of the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. The award, which recognizes exceptional nonprofit organizations that are engaged in the foundation’s core fields of work and helps ensure their long-term sustainability, provides each organization with $350,000 to $1 million, depending on the size of its budget. 

PayPal processed $212 million in charitable donations during December 2014, including $8.6 million raised through its Give Cheer campaign, the online payment-processing company reported. That’s an increase of nearly 50 percent over the $142 million in donations the company processed in December 2013.

During Give Cheer, Pay­Pal matched 1 percent of each contribution made to participating nonprofits as well as those registered on the Canadian online charity hub CanadaHelps and crowdfunding website Razoo.

These five insights will help you approach your next ask from a more comfortable, authentic and successful standpoint as a fundraiser!

(Press release, Feb. 3, 2015) — Leveraging findings from The Blackbaud Index, Blackbaud Inc. released its Charitable Giving Report, providing the nonprofit sector with the latest data on overall and online charitable giving in 2014, as well insight from industry experts and case studies. The report includes overall giving data from nearly 5,000 nonprofit organizations representing $16.2 billion in total fundraising and online giving data from nearly 4,000 nonprofits representing $2 billion in online fundraising from 2014.

If your answer is no to any of the following questions, it is too soon to ask for a major gift.

Recent tweets on fundraising (#fundraising).

The mother of a mentally disabled woman claims a Southern California nonprofit was negligent in hiring a job coach who would eventually plead no contest to molesting her daughter. Rosie Clinton said a moment in October 2010 changed the course of her daughter's life forever.

"This incident changed her whole persona," Clinton said of her now 43-year-old daughter, who four years ago had been getting services through PathPoint Inc., a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit agency specializing in helping disabled adults assimilate to ordinary life.