Yesterday, I got an email from Red Box asking me to take a picture of myself hugging a Red Box. Hugging a huge DVD dispensing box. Why haven’t I done this with my nonprofit?! This is a simple tactic of creating buzz. And it’s really easy! If you’re Western Kentucky University, you could have a [...]

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A few weeks back, I posted this question: Q: As an E.D., what percentage of my time should be spent on fund raising? I am relatively new at this and want to balance my schedule. My answer was something like, “100%.” And I got some comeuppance. Here are some of the comments: Roger Carr responded: [...]

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Last time, we looked at creating a year-end strategy for fundraising letters. But in today’s world, it’s wise to consider complementing these appeals with tools like Facebook and Twitter. According to FundRaising Success Magazine: Between 35 percent to 42 percent of online giving happens in November and December each year, and the average gift during [...]

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In the last three weeks, I’ve given five talks about social media and fundraising to various groups of development officers. Today I was asked to sum up one of the sessions. Summing up social media without slides is challenging but here was my attempt: Social media is real Social media is “social”—be prepared to dialogue [...]

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The latest edition of FundRaising Success Magazine has a terrific article by Bryan Schoell called Get Your Head Out of the Sand. Here’s the begining: People are talking about you online. Ignoring that fact won’t make it go away, so you’d best join in the conversation. Yesterday, the mother of a sick child Googled the [...]

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The Chronicle of Philanthropy is reporting that Sen. Grassley is continuing his push to increase regulations on nonprofit hospitals. I work in one and didn’t think the regulation could get any tighter–especially for small community hospitals with a large reliance on Medicaid and Medicare! His focus and intensity on this issue seems to me to [...]

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Anyone that’s attended any of my fundraising seminars knows I’m a big fan of storytelling. The NY Times offers a great article called 5 Tips for Telling Better Stories. In short, they are: Keep it simple Openings and closings are very important Be mindful of your story’s spine Make sure not to alienate your audience [...]

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Sue Hoye over at the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Prospecting blog offers disturbing statistics about donor experiences with nonprofits. The Great American Donor Survey, conducted by Campbell Rinker, a marketing research company in Valencia, Calif., that specializes in nonprofit work, found that 83 percent of charitable donors consider the giving experience to be what they expect. [...]

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Well, the PRWeb approved press release is live and available at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/04/prweb855134.htm

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Reading through a recent issue of Contributions Magazine, I was delighted to stumble across a summary of a new book, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. The authors underwent an incredibly thorough research project to try and ferret out the things that made nonprofits excellent. It sounds a lot like the research [...]

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