Nature Conservancy

Dan Pallotta, the marketing executive who has been leading a campaign to get donors to stop evaluating charities based on their overhead costs, announced in August he was planning a three-day, 60-mile walk next June to raise $1 million to defend nonprofits against critics of their spending. In a news release sent to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, it was relayed that the three-day march planned for June 2015 has been postponed.

(Press release, Nov. 25, 2014) — Blackbaud, a global provider of software and services for the nonprofit, charitable giving and education communities, announced the availability of Blackbaud CRM^™ 4.0. The new release offers customers rich developments in the areas of usability, quality, performance and innovation.

As FundRaising Success gears up for the ninth annual Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence, take a look back at the 2011 Grand Control of the Year from The Nature Conservancy.

Like with most things in life, the key to generating solid data that will make a difference in your donor relationships and, subsequently, your fundraising is to go for quality over quantity.

You know your donors and prospects are active on social media, and you know you should track donor data in this ever-evolving media. But how do you know what to look for and analyze when it comes to social-media data? On June 10, we'll host the Engage Virtual Workshop: Driving Donations With Data to help attendees come to better understand and work with their data gathering and usage.

You know you need to gather donor data. But why? And more importantly, how? And what do you do with it once you've gathered it? Are you gathering too much? Or the wrong kind?

Here is a mobile and social fundraising success checklist excerpted from "Mobile for Good: A How-To Fundraising Guide for Nonprofits" by Heather Mansfield, founder and principal blogger at Nonprofit Tech for Good. By reading the book and implementing the steps necessary to launch a comprehensive mobile and social fundraixsing plan — and checking off the must-do items as you go along — your nonprofit will have in place mobile and social fundraising plan flexible enough to adjust to rapid changes in fundraising and communication technology that will occur over the next decade.

Mind the gap. That’s the advice in a new report on midlevel donor programs. The folks at Sea Change Strategies caution that nonprofits are missing out on a ton of money simply because they’re overlooking a committed and productive audience: middle donors — the donors who give more than low-dollar direct-marketing donations, but less than major-gift targets.

The easiest way to ensure that your website and blog are mobile-compatible is to embrace responsive design. Here is a selection of 11 exceptional, responsively designed nonprofit websites. Pay particular attention to Heifer International. Its new site is gorgeous. Hopefully, your nonprofit has a new website on your to-do list for 2014-15, and you can study and learn from the websites listed below.

Russ Reid, a marketer who determined that nonprofit organizations could benefit from a modern, professional approach to raising funds, died Saturday, Dec. 7, at his home in Sierra Madre, Calif. He was 82 years old.