Twitter is a great free tool. And in a time of economic uncertainty, a free tool is a welcome help!
Twitter is called “microblogging.” You get 140 characters to get your message across.
140 characters to answer the question on the Twitter home page: “What are you doing now?” When you first start to tweet, it feels [...]

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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 be a [...]

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My blog post What really bugs your donors? has gotten a lot of traffic.
I’ve received over 100 responses between the question on LinkedIn, the comments on the blog, and emails sent directly to me!
I’ve been amazed at how relieved people are that someone finally asked them what annoys them! Donors have been carrying these things [...]

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The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Prospecting blog has an interesting post about a new planned giving tool. Apparently, it’s a CD that donors can play to see the benefits of making a planned gifts and a charity can customize it to be the “charity of choice” for the example.
But wait! There’s more:
What worries some fund raisers, [...]

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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

Tell the truth

It’s amazing how easy [...]

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Uber web 2.0 guru, Chris Brogan listed 50 social networking/web 2.0 sites at 50 Online Applications and Sites to Consider.
How many are you using?
More importantly: how many are your donors using?
It’s wonderfully easy to engage donors where they’re already congregating–online or off.

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Anne Jackson just posted some great Twitter Tips.
While I don’t only follow Twitter on the web like @flowerdust (Anne’s Twitter name), I loved her tip on tracking tweets.
I also really liked this tweet tip (lisp-like pun intended):

4. Interact - To kill the Twitter Diva, I realize there is still a need to interact with [...]

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I just got back from a talk about the changing labor force in Maine.
It’s a very complex and challenging picture. The short form is that we’re facing an aging population without the evidence of a younger people coming in to fill the jobs. And the older people that are retiring still have many more [...]

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This question came across one of the listservs I’m on
Is there anyone using social networking sites such as Facebook for fundraising in any way? If so, can you provide details and is it successful?
I think we all need to be asking this kind of question!
Here’s my response:

Great question!
I’m not sure anyone’s really “figured out” how [...]

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Here’s another story in the growing collection of unassuming people that become noteworthy philanthropists by leaving millions of dollars to charity.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that James Ebbert, the son of a sharecropper, left $10 million to charities in Pennsylvania.
When reporting on this high-school-turned-business-owner:
He lived frugally and invested his money well, says the [...]

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