A couple weeks ago, I was grounded in Newark, NJ so I got to listen to some NJ radio. One ad for a nonprofit caught my attention and then quickly failed. I blogged about it at Does the phrase “tax deductible” kill donations? And I gave some suggestions on how the ad could’ve gotten me [...]
Last week, in my weekly email to Fundraising Kick subscribers, I told them to stop talking about what percent of their budget goes to “overhead.” I won’t go into the entire message I sent, but here’s a summary. You need to know the percentage People are talking about the percentage of a nonprofit’s budget that [...]
With Thanksgiving sixteen days away here in the USA, it’s a great time to do a quick 2-step gratitude check. Pull out your most recent fundraising letter. (You sent one in September, right?) Or your next one. (You have one queued up for late November/early December, right?) With a green Sharpie circle all the times [...]
Studies continue to show that online giving is the fastest growing fundraising channel. But not every nonprofit is experiencing this stellar growth. The best way to grow online donations So what’s the best way to grow online donations? A firm called Dunham+Company recently released a study that has counterintuitive results. The study says direct mail [...]
If you’re like many nonprofits, you’ve sent a fall fundraising appeal this month and you plan on sending one towards the end of the year. You might want to reconsider that plan. NPR did a great piece on political direct mail. It’s definitely worth listening to, but here are two take-a-ways: It’s going to be [...]
Yesterday, I sent my Fundraising Kick members 3 contrarian tips on writing successful fundraising letters. Here are three more tips that seem to go against what we’d expect. These tips come from an amazing new book by Jeff Brooks called The Fundraiser’s Guide to Irresistible Communications. I’ve been a fan of Jeff’s for almost ten [...]
