Social media applications like blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can be useful tools to help you publicize, gain attendees and supporters for fundraisers such as benefit auctions. Not only are these tools free to use, but they enable you to relay short, constant reminders about your  fundraiser. Creating “something to write” can be overwhelming for […]

Maintaining a sufficient amount of donors is vital for a charity organization. Whether it is those who donate separate of an event or those who return year after year to your race, keeping them is a priority. We want to gain new supporters and initiate more funds, but if we let our veteran supporters slip […]

You may have heard of the three R’s of education – Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Today we’ll look at what I call the “Three R’s” of Fundraising Letters and hear from one non profit who implements all three of these ideas. […]

Non-profits are always trying to find creative and inexpensive ways to market their organizations more effectively. Sometimes, you are aiming to promote a specific event, like a fundraiser or a membership drive, while in other situations, you are aiming a bit broader, and just hope to get your organization’s name out there in a positive […]

1. Failure to ask for a gift. Don’t assume that your donors will know what you want them to do. Ask for a gift.  And make sure to include a reply envelope to make it easy for your donors to send their gift to you. 2. Using a dirty list. Keeping your list clean is […]

In the December newsletter I included a feature called “Year in Review” – Mini Annual Reports by Email. It showed an example of how Village Enterprise Fund updated the traditional annual report into our digital age. Many nonprofits work on the calendar year, but others have fiscal years that end in other months.  For example, […]

In the first part of this series, we took a look at ways that the Barack Obama campaign for President was able to launch the most ambitious political fundraising campaign in history. We then illustrated how small non-profits can emulate these strategies in their own particular environments. In this segment, I’d like to write about […]