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Are you moving forward with your skill set, seeking engagement tools while wearing different hats? If so, you might do well in a game of Nonprofit Buzzword Bingo at Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com.
Highly recommended for those who like to laugh and those who'd like to improve their vocabulary.
Technorati Tag: npjargon
Some fundraisers are living in mortal fear of the coming US presidential election. Not over who might or might not win, but over the awe-inspiring amounts of money the candidates and parties are raising. They're scooping up all our donations, you might be crying.
Don't worry. Some in-depth research done by my colleagues here at Merkle says it just doesn't work out that way.
Examining the Impact of Political Fundraising on Nonprofit Direct Mail Performance (PDF) looks at a lot of numbers around political and charitable fundraising.
The points you most want to know:
Technorati Tag: politics
An agency and their client go to work on creating the STOP sign. Raise your hand if you've seen this process before.
Group-think, multiple agendas, and fuzzy thinking all add up to failed work. It happens too often.
Thanks to Glory to God for All Things for the tip.
This is not about fundraising. It's about blogging.
As a blogger, I get a lot of stupid, ill-considered spam press releases from public relations firms. I'm just getting tired of it.
Many of them are stunningly irrelevant. It's clear in these cases that the sender doesn't have an inkling what goes on at donorpowerblog.com. But hey, it doesn't cost anything to email one more press release, so just send it anyway.
That's spam. Corrosive, obnoxious spam.
I'm sorry, but "public relations" has something to do with "relations," doesn't it? Sending out press releases to a bunch of blogs that you've never read isn't relational. It's lazy.
I've been wondering about an effective way to keep my in-box relatively spam-free. Then I found out about a great initiative by Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker.com. She's started a wiki called PR Companies Who Spam Bloggers. Any blogger can go there, grab these names, and put them in their spam filter. Bingo: less spam. Better yet, any blogger can add their own PR spammers to the list, thus cutting off not only their own spam, but helping others too.
Count me in!
Gina has chosen to route of putting domain names on the list. People at these companies are too lazy to read a blog before they ask its author to pay attention to whatever they're pitching. I'm not interested in doing the filtering that's their job to do.
Even if a press release has something to do with the nonprofit world, don't send it to me. Anyone who spent three minutes reading this blog would see that I don't use press releases. I know some bloggers do, but I don't. To find out which of us do and which don't, you have to read us. If you, Mr./Ms. PR Flack, don't feel like reading the blogs you're sending stuff to, then you need to re-think your career choice.
I'm happy to hear about cool stuff connected with fundraising: Useful new books for fundraisers, nonprofits doing something that's really donor-powered. Spiffy new services that empower fundraisers and/or donors. If you have something you think I should know, read my blog and take a few seconds to show me how your cool stuff fits into my corner of the conversation.
If you can't do that, you're a spammer. And you're heading to the spam filters of a lot of bloggers, where you belong.
If you're a blogger who's had it with PR spam, give this a thought. Not only will it reduce the torrent of irrelevant, lame press releases into your life, but you'll help make spamming an even more pointless than it is. Maybe some of the PR spammers will wake up and start doing their actual jobs.
If you are a client of a PR firm and you see their domain name on this list, fire them now. You've been paying them to trash your reputation in the online world.
If you work in PR (and I know this is largely pointless, since the flacks who don't get it obviously don't read this blog) read this helpful post on pitching bloggers at A Whole Lotta Nothing by Matt Haughey: Dear PR people: How to Pitch Bloggers.
From the Getting Email Delivered blog, The Top 5 Mistakes Email Senders Make in Scheduling Their Mailings:
Check out the post. You might be surprised at some of the details.
Thanks to BeRelevant for the tip.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, email, nptech
I hope you're getting a vacation this summer. Really get all the way away. No email. No urgent calls. Just you and as much nature as you can take without stress. It'll recharge your creativity and ability to think.
Everyone knows that, including the excellent Presentation Zen blog: Creativity, nature, & getting off the grid ...
I talk a lot about the importance of getting away from the computer, getting off the grid and finding time alone. This is crucial to keeping the creative spirit alive. Time alone is necessary, and time alone with nature is even better. It's important for fueling and nurturing the creative spirit to take the time to be completely present and appreciate nature's unaffected beauty and simplicity.
It works. Here's where I'm going:
Technorati Tags: fundraising, vacation
Useful Truths: Apply With Care
Here's my column in this month's FundRaising Success magazine, Useful Truths: Apply With Care.
Teaser: Shifting from a volume orientation to a value one is something most nonprofits would be wise to do. Just don’t do it with a chain saw, the way Sweetness & Light did it. Take it slowly. Replace lower-value donors with higher-value ones. Then you’ll get the improved performance you want — and the overall revenue you need.
Here's an idea that will make your accountants' heads explode. (That's not the reason I'm sharing, by the way.)
Suppose you raise too much designated money for a particular project. If you're on your toes, you have a disclaimer somewhere that says something like: If we raise more funds than needed for any given project, your donation will be used to support similar projects. That covers you ethically to be able to use designated funds in a different way from the way the donor may have intended. And most donors are fine with that.
But why not put a whole new level of power and respect back into your donors' hands?
Here's how: Once you've raised enough money for the project, you write to those donors whose gifts came after a project became fully funded. Tell them funds are no longer needed for the project, and offer them two choices:
If they take no action, you will re-designate the gift for them.
While you're at it, make it possible for them to send another gift.
How many gifts do you think you'll have to refund? I'll guess so close to zero as to be statistically insignificant. How many additional gifts will you get? A fair number.
But what you'll get will be donors who feel more empowered, more respected, and more involved. And that will pay off in the long (and short) term.
Have I seen this done? No. I've only seen accountants' heads explode at the thought of this idea. So if you can pull this off, you may be a first. Let me know how it goes.
Technorati Tags: refunds, philanthropy
Raising funds around disasters is very different from everyday fundraising. We talk about the differences, and what you need to know to be successful -- including when a disaster is not a disaster. Plus the two things to look for if you're wondering whether something truly qualifies as a disaster in the fundraising sense.
To listen, click here to download the audio file or visit the Fundraising Is Beautiful page here, where you'll find several listening and subscription options.
Or subscribe with iTunes: 
Money can mess you up. Despite the old wisdom that money can't buy happiness, millions of people ruin their lives trying to do just that.
But there's a loophole: There's one way that money can buy happiness: When you give it away.
Anyway, that's what many researchers have found, including a recent study reported at the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: Spending on Happiness.
... spending as little as $5 over the course of a day on another person led to demonstrable increases in happiness. In other words, people needn't be wealthy and donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity to experience the benefits of prosocial spending; small changes -- a few dollars reallocated from oneself to another -- can make a difference.
As a nonprofit, you are essentially a money-to-happiness conversion factory. It's one of the greatest things you do.
You are helping people create meaning in their lives and breaking free from delusional struggles to spend their way to happiness.
So the next time you hear someone talk like they're ashamed of fundraising, tell 'em to go be ashamed of something else. This one is to be proud of!
Technorati Tags: fundraising, money
Recent research from Pew finds Baby Boomers more pessimistic than the generations older and younger than they are: Baby Boomers: The Gloomiest Generation. How bad is it? Here are some examples:
In every case, the Boomers show more pessimistic numbers than those younger and older than them.
Should fundraisers be worried? The Agitator thinks so: Boomer Gloom Affecting Fundraising?
When the largest and most wealthy generation of donors is in a near-Prozac stage and scared to death of their financial future in a society they perceive is going to the dogs, it's not good news for fundraisers.
I'm not so sure the sky is falling. Polling research is notoriously fickle. Next week we could just as well hear about another one finding the Boomers to be jumping for joy. This is a snapshot, not a moving picture. A different moment might look very different, even if conditions are only slightly different.
But it's worth paying attention to. Pessimistic donors may or may not be less responsive -- but their motivators are probably different. They'll want their gifts to promote safety and stability. Framing your work as "revolutionary" is not likely to appeal.
Keep your eyes on this topic so you can respond well.
See also Aging boomers find faith.
Technorati Tags: boomers, fundraising
Good article in Slate on the way people read online: Lazy Eyes: How we read online. It's different. People don't really read; they skim. And if we want them to pay attention to what we write, the author says, "... it's not [the reader] who has to change. It's me, the writer."
Here are some of the things you can do to make online copy more readable:
Technorati Tags: fundraising, readability, nptech
Most blogs run by nonprofits are so boring that even a critique of them would be too boring to read.
Clearly, we need some help with blogging.
Here's some, from Britt Bravo at NetSquared: Nonprofit Blogging Burning Questions and Answers.
It's a long list of what it takes to blog right. If you're thinking about launching a blog (and you probably should be), read this post.
For example, Britt says the person who should write the blog is the person most excited to do it ...
... but please, no interns. The interns can be contributing bloggers, but they shouldn't be the lead blogger. I've seen way to many nonprofit blogs with tons of posts between June-August, and then the intern leaves and it's a ghost town.
This could save you some trouble.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, blogs, nptech
Many people at nonprofits live in fear of donor complaints. This fear has a corrosive effect. In this program, we talk about how to turn a complaint into a positive, how to deal with complainers, how not to deal with them, and a few simple things you can do to decrease your number of complaints.
To listen, click here to download the audio file or visit the Fundraising Is Beautiful page here, where you'll find several listening and subscription options.
Or subscribe with iTunes:
What's it like to be one of your donors? Do they have to fight their way through voicemail hell to talk? Do you screw everything up like a plumber? Are you casually cruel like an airline?
You don't have to be a sadist to create experiences like those (though I'm sure it helps). Bad experience comes from companies not caring about what their customers go through.
If you don't care about it, I can almost guarantee you're creating unpleasant experiences for your donors.
A few smart companies are starting to figure this out. And a blog they're reading is Customer Experience Matters, which recently posted Introducing The 6 Laws Of Customer Experience:
This list is not aimed at the nonprofit sector. Nevertheless, it would be smart to pay attention these things. Because donor experience really does matter.
We don't typically have a lot of front-line interactions with donors the way retailers and service companies do, but that's no excuse to ignore the one-to-one touches we have with donors. Do the people who take calls from donors really get it? Do they understand your cause well enough to answer questions? Do they love donors? Do they have the authority and access to comply with donor requests?
Pay attention to these things. They matter as much as doing your fundraising and marketing right.
See also How poor service destroys your reputation.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, customer service
They like to say direct mail is dying. They carry its not-so-limp form to the bring-out-your-dead guy, who's not sure he should take it. Direct mail protests the whole way out.
Not so fast. Direct Mail Beats Predictions, Study Finds. The study, reported in the Prospecting blog, found that as people age into direct-mail responsive life stages, the show behavior similar to previous generations at those same ages:
... older generations are being replaced as direct-mail givers by baby-boomers.... The generation of the donor doesn't matter nearly as much as whether or not they have the time and the discretionary income to respond to direct-mail solicitations.
Your results may vary. But there's an important point here: direct mail is not dead. It's not even dying. It's changing. In some cases, it's not changing all that much, while in others the change is radical.
So keep your eyes open. Watch your results. Talk to your list brokers and other experts. Make your decisions on facts that relate directly to your program, not on blanket assertions that direct mail is dying -- or that direct mail is charging along unchanged.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, boomers, direct mail
Here's Ira Glass, host of NPR's wonderful This American Life, on how to effectively tell a story.
He's talking about broadcast stories, but it works for fundraising stories too:
Thanks to Copyblogger for the tip.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, storytelling
In a wicked critique of an ad for the World Food Programme, Cause-Related Marketing envisions a BS-laden speech by an "artsy creative director" ...
We'll put actresses like Rachel Weisz Drew Barrymore in PSAs, in print ads and on Oprah. Imagine stark, beautifully-shot images of Drew feeding darling doe-eyed kids in Kenya in haunting black and white. The images will underscore that issue of hunger in the Developing World is black and white...
See: Keep Artsy Creative Directors Away from Your Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns.
As a creative director, I want to be offended. But I can't. It's too sadly accurate: Creative directors are basically a race of evil beings. (For the record, a few of us have vowed to use our dark powers for good, and must battle our own wicked hearts; this would make a great movie.)
Creative directors become very adept and persuading others to trade aesthetics for effectiveness. That's no doubt why this ad has a stark and beautiful black-and-white photos, rather than a "real" looking color photo.
And the photo isn't the only problem with this ad:
What can I say? That's what creative directors do. But you can say no to them. Then watch the hissy-fit.
Many more Stupid nonprofit ads here.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, creative directors, advertising
You can put an awful lot of stuff in an email. And it won't cost you. No paper, no ink, no postage. So why not just keep adding stuff to those emails?
Well, maybe it keeps people from responding.
And article at MarketingProfs thinks you should consider that: Simplicity Is the Nature of Great Emails.
... a huge body of marketing research demonstrates that the human mind is a sucker for simplicity and focus. The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more.
One thing at a time. That always works better. And not just in email.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, nptech, email
Thought you might enjoy this video about what you can do (or not do) about hunger in America today.
As we said yesterday, it's tough to motivate compassion with humor; humor is by nature a less compassionate state of mind. But maybe humor can get the word out?
(Disclosure: America's Second Harvest is a client of Merkle, and I was involved in the production of this video.)
Technorati Tags: fundraising, YouTube
