In a recent blog, I erroneously described Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who have been described as “psychology’s Lennon and McCartney,” as “two Princeton University psychologists.” Actually, only one of the pair worked at Princeton—Kahneman, who has been there since 1993. Tversky was at Stanford University at the time of his death in 1996. This is all background for an interesting email I got last week from Adam Dickter, a public relations guy...
Believe it or not, my Elvis obsession helped me arrive here, right at this video from University of Cambridge. Elvis has played a central, deified role in his life and in the lives of the women who knew him. But in this video, he’s cast as a more peripheral character. In the short clip, a Cambridge historian narrates the fascinating history of teenage fundraising in 1950s America...
There is a viral campaign going around right now born from the discomfort people have with a certain online news site. This website seems to polarize many people in the U.S. and has been a big player in the recent political arena. The campaign is trying to use the very basic feedback elements of AdWords to hurt the website. That has some scary implications...
As Black Friday approached, I became very aware that our peak giving season is now here. For my organization, during the last four months of the year, we receive more than 60 percent of our donation revenue. I stopped for a moment the other day during lunch and wondered why giving at the end of the calendar year is so important...
In the end, no matter how much you think you know (or someone else knows), it’s really easy to do some landing page testing these days. If you haven’t been testing aspects of your landing pages, then you need to get on it quickly...
I first wrote about #GivingTuesday back in 2013, one year after its initial launch. It’s three years later, and my stance has yet to be swayed. I am not saying #GivingTuesday should go away. Its results have been successful and there’s no reason to think it won’t continue its ace track record of fantastic fundraising. But here’s what I am saying: If your nonprofit participates in #GivingTuesday, do it right...
I decided to look at Food for the Poor's website to see if I could learn anything about its growth from its site alone. There are many things I do not know about the charity—but neither do many people considering making a donation. Often, all someone has to go by is a website. So, what’s happening on its siteI decided to look at the charity's website to see if I could learn anything about its growth from its site alone. There are many things I do not know about Food for the Poor—but let’s face it, neither do many people considering making a donation. Often, all someone has to go by is an organization's website. So, how is Food for the Poor using its site to engage donors?...
Whatever nonprofits are doing right now to sustain and grow donor relationships, it’s not working especially well. So, adding an additional relatively inexpensive donor retention strategy into your existing donor development plan makes sense. Here are five strategies you can use to build donor relationships online...
Social media marketing and advertising has to be managed like direct marketing. Can you imagine running a direct marketing program with no audience targeting? Fail. If your organization is advertising on Facebook, please treat it like a direct-response marketing channel. Do not just prioritize the creative or copywriting...
Collecting—whether business cards, followers on Twitter, "likes" on Facebook or first-time donors—is meaningless without a strategy to turn those relatively blank connections into meaningful, lasting relationships. If your marketing and/or fundraising strategy is based on collecting and counting, it’s time to rethink this strategy...
