New York, NY, July, 2009 — As a result of the declining economy, individuals are looking for innovative and free ways to help their favorite charities, knowing that because of a national drop in donations, these causes need help more than ever!
May 21, 2009 — The SMU Consulting Club (of the SMU Cox School of Business) is conducting a research project on how nonprofit organizations use technology and the web. We would like to invite you to take part. If your organization has a Web site, uses online marketing and manages a donor database.
Milwaukee, WI, April 4, 2009 — After more than 1,000 feasibility interviews spanning three decades, consultant Gary J. Hubbell has come to believe that not every institution needs to hire counsel when planning their next campaign.
It’s March of 2009 — certainly you haven’t forgotten about your New Year’s resolution already, right?
Whether it’s exercising, spending more time volunteering or some other personal goal, the first 100 days are critical to your success. You must engage and take action if you desire any level of accomplishment.
The same applies to your organization and the online resolutions you might have set entering the year. If you haven’t taken action to put your ideas and new online concepts into motion just yet, now would be a good time to revisit your organization’s resolutions for 2009.
If fundraising is the communication of a need in order to elicit a philanthropic response, then it’s obvious that in order to raise funds, you need to get the communication part right. The digital age was supposed to make things easier, but are we taking full advantage of electronic communications?
The fact that you can process a donation electronically makes it more convenient, but it doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in donation revenue. This was the first mistake by the sector — we thought that opening up donation pages on our Web sites would attract large numbers of new donors. But apart from isolated cases, that didn’t happen. And while e-mail also has become part of our communication strategy to existing supporters, we’re still struggling to see the digital age improve donor acquisition.
For most businesses and organizations, a Web site started out as an online billboard or brochure. As technology has changed — and it has done so at breakneck speed the last several years — Web sites have become online locations where audiences expect to get real services and take actions important to them. “Modernizing” your Web presence — particularly if it involves multiple sites, complex e-commerce applications or extensive libraries of content — can be a long, costly (and sometimes painful) experience. Our questionnaire can help you make an informed decision. The key is to keep sight of your organization’s goals and your audience’s
In May, FundRaising Success conducted the webinar “If You Optimize It, They Will Come: SEO Best Practices for Fundraisers,” featuring Todd Whitley, vice president of e-marketing at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; Farra Trompeter, vice president of client relationships and strategy at Big Duck; and Rob Yoegel, vice president and online publisher, for the Target Marketing Group. Our panel was able answer many of the audience’s questions, but not all. Here, our experts address those questions that we couldn’t get to. To view this webinar, go to www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/story/story.bsp?sid=96827&var=story. For a look at all of the archived FundRaising Success webinars, go to www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/docs/webinars.bsp.
In the last few years, I have conducted sessions on fundraising at about 20 workshops in 14 “developing” countries — in Latin America, Africa and Asia. I’ve met amazing people and come across many examples of successful local-resource mobilization. There’s some very sophisticated fundraising happening in Latin America and Asia. Much of the cutting-edge work is being done by international NGOs like UNICEF and Greenpeace, but there’s also a growing band of indigenous nonprofits that are using professional fundraising techniques.
There was no shortage of cyber chatter surrounding last month’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans. Here’s a sampling of some observations from bloggers around the country. For a more comprehensive list of blog entries about the conference, click here. “Observations on the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference,” posted March 26 by Kurt Voelker and Andrew Cohen, chief technology officer and project director, respectively, at Forum One Communications’ INfluence blog: Kurt Voelker and I (Andrew Cohen), traveled to New Orleans to participate in the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference. This was my fourth conference and the most useful and fulfilling. In addition our volunteering and presenting,
“It’s not Moves Management for humans where once you have a relationship you’re going to move your donors around like chess pieces. No, no, no! Amazon doesn’t tell me what to do; I tell Amazon what I want to do. Then I let Amazon make suggestions about what I should do.” — Kintera Vice President of Market Strategy David Lawson on the importance of donor-driven relationships, speaking during his session, “Test for Success: Constructing Campaigns for Future Success,” March 20 at NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans.
