Have you ever attended a conference or a course, but then failed to act on what you’d learned? Hey, it happens to the best of us. So, what’s a quick and easy shift you can you make today to ensure that you follow through on implementing those tactics you know will make your organization stronger (and keep your donors giving)?...
The American Red Cross experienced a 32 percent drop in donations over the past year amid growing competition from newer nonprofits. The organization’s rank among the nation’s best-supported nonprofits fell from ninth to 21st place in an annual survey released Thursday by The Chronicle of Philanthropy—its lowest position since the survey began in 1991. The…
If you’ve been in fundraising for any length of time, you’ve no doubt come across what I call “Busyness Syndrome.” I first encountered this disorder during my second nonprofit development job. I’d been hired as a grant writer for an agency serving disadvantaged women and children. They were an organization I admired and was familiar with from my days working for a large grant-making foundation that funded them often. But what I found inside the organization was disheartening...
Like you, perhaps, I have felt a sense of frustration over the latest bad news from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project. Bottom line: We, as a fundraising community, are doing a poor job when it comes to retaining donors. But if you are a nonprofit with a budget that won’t stretch to cover techniques like modeling and multiple copy variations based on donor actions and characteristics, there are still things you can do...
The 2015 Fundraising Effectiveness Project report summarizes data from 8,025 survey respondents (more than double from last year) covering year-to-year fundraising results for 2013 to 2014. The report shows that: Gains of $3.611 billion in gifts from new, upgraded current and previously lapsed donors were offset by losses of $3.438 billion through reduced gifts and…
If you want gifts, you must give them. The essence of a relationship is reciprocity: give and take. When you are kind and giving, people want to reciprocate. Yet too often nonprofits put "taking" at the center of their development strategies. Do you ask, “What can we do today for our donors?” Or, do you fall into the camp that asks, “What can our donors do for us?”
For every $100 in new donations nonprofits gained in fiscal year 2014 over the previous year, they lost $95 in lapsed or reduced donations, according to a new survey. While that five percent net gain in gifts is "disappointing," said Nathan Dietz, senior research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute,…
Keeping great talent is a huge challenge for nonprofit and for-profit organizations alike. As an example, Turnkey engaged psychologist Otis Fulton to help us dissect the psychology of peer-to-peer fundraising. Turnkey could have really used Otis full time, but there wasn’t budget for that. I was worried about retaining the talent...
Angered by videos in which Planned Parenthood officials discussed compensation for providing fetal tissue from abortions, Republicans in Congress are again demanding an end to government funding for the nearly 100-year-old provider of women’s health services. Away from the headlines, however, the group is facing other major challenges, including one from a far different source:…
You can’t consume them in five minutes. Yet all too often nonprofits treat their donors exactly like a gumball dispensed from a machine. Chew it up. Spit it out. Done. Oh yeah, maybe you send a quick "thanks" to whomever gave you the change to buy the gum. But that’s as far as your gratitude takes you. You’re over it...
