Web Design

Clover co-founders Ben Rugg and Jim Elliston share their keys to ensure your website gives donors and visitors the best possible online experience.

Today, every fundraiser understands that direct mail can't do it all. Any campaign needs the other channels, to some extent ... and ideally on the same page. And while the closely coordinated direct-mail and e-mail campaigns are both popular and successful today, perhaps the most effective demonstration of the offline-online marriage is a personalized URL (PURL) campaign.

Advocacy is a powerful strategy for making progress on your issues. It's also a powerful tactic for finding new donors. By giving people the opportunity to engage in your work and join with others to build a better world, you help them take the first step toward becoming long-term supporters of your organization.

The Worthwhile Company, a website development firm based in Greenville, SC is pleased to announce the launch of Web for Good, a 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation.

The goal of Web for Good is to support ministries and nonprofits by providing competitive access to Worthwhile’s services, for free. Its website, webforgood.org, allows nonprofits to nominate themselves, and even allows anyone to suggest their favorite, deserving organization.

Clover, the small business Web design platform, announced its partnership with Homegirl Café, the award-winning, Los Angeles-based eatery, a division of the nonprofit Homeboy Industries, employing formerly incarcerated and gang-affiliated men and women  to launch the restaurant’s first stand-alone, professional marketing website. In addition providing the new turnkey website at www.homegirlcafe.org, Clover also made a $1,000 donation to the organization.

Nonprofit brand strategy consultant Michele Levy provided 11 marketing communications best practices that fundraisers should utilize in their communications strategies in a recent webinar, Ten Marketing Communications Activities You Must Do.

If you don’t think Congress should have extended the Bush-era tax cuts this month, why not donate your own tax savings to charity? That’s an idea that three professors are promoting on a new Web site called Give It Back for Jobs.

The site, which helps people calculate their own tax cut under the deal that President Obama struck with House Republicans, was created by Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science, and Daniel Markovits, a professor of law, at Yale University; and Robert Hockett, a professor of law at Cornell University.

Do you have the guts? I have 10 ideas that might scare the daylights out of you. They're probably difficult, politically unpopular or against the rules of your organization. Furthermore, these ideas might not work for you. They could even be very, very bad for you. But I don't think so. These are good ideas that have worked for others who made them happen despite the difficulties. I dare you to try at least one.

As you plot your fundraising strategy for 2011, it will become important to give some thought to how and if mobile giving might fit into your overall planning.

Here are six more online fundraising communications takeaways gleaned from the 2010 elections.