With the year coming to a close, now is a great time to be reviewing how your fundraising approaches worked this year, as well as what needs to be changed for next year. One of the article below talks about planning fundraising strategically.
With the holidays upon us and all of the activities that surround that, next week will be the last edition of 2009 that I send out. As always, please feel free to forward this to anyone you feel may also be helped by this information. Thanks again for reading!
FUNDRAISING
Donors: 9 Reasons ‘No’ Can Be ‘Yes’ (The NonProfit Times) As a fundraiser, you probably will hear “no” a lot more than you hear “yes.” Ross gives nine examples of different “no” explanations donors tend to give. If you listen hard enough, maybe you will hear the real reason behind their decline and change it into a “yes.”
Volunteers Give 10 Times More Than Other Americans, Survey Finds (The Chronicle of Philanthropy) On average, people donate 10 times more money if they have volunteered in the past year, according to the study. This article also covers some concerns that volunteers have for non-profit organizations.
How to Develop an Effective Strategic Fundraising Plan (Christian Leadership Alliance) We all know the value of living in the “information age.” But when it comes to strategic planning, many of us unwittingly choose to short-circuit the flow of information by not requiring ourselves to have accurate information. Many times I have participated in meetings where a person will guess at previous results rather than getting out of their chair and going to their file to obtain a report. Guessing is no good. Often the primary value I bring to a consulting session is to simply not settle for guesses. It’s very common for me to ask a person to leave the room and go find a report that will give us precise information.
To the Point: Be Generous to Inspire Generosity (FundRaising Success) The author lived in Ukraine a few years ago, and a friend who just returned from there told me a great story that holds the secret to inspiring generosity. Really. The writer’s friend was eating breakfast at a pricey hotel frequented by his international agency….
TECHNOLOGY
Big Changes to Facebook Pages Could Hurt Small Nonprofits (Wild Apricot Blog) Rebecca Heather Mansfield of NonProfit Tech 2.0 alerts us to some major changes coming to Facebook Fan Pages through the next few weeks and into early 2010. “My first instinct is that the changes below are going to significantly impact nonprofits,” she says, “and in many cases, not in a good way.” Status Updates showing up in the News Feed to all fans is no longer guaranteed. The Boxes Tab will disappear. The Tabs width will shrink from 760 pixels wide to 520 pixels. The ability to extract the e-mail addresses…
OTHER ARTICLES
Public ‘want to know how money is spent’ (Third Sector) More than half of the general public would donate more money to charity if they knew exactly how it was spent, a new survey of 2,000 people in the UK indicates. The research was carried out for donation website See the Difference, which will be launched next year. The data shows that 51 per cent of people would give more if they knew how their money was spent and 40 per cent would do so if they could actually see the difference their money was making.
Congressional Research Service Analyzes Charitable World (thanks to the Chronicle of Philanthropy for providing this link) The Congressional Research Service has issued a report that reviews the size and scope of the charitable world and outlines some of the policy questions that affect it. “An Overview of the Nonprofit and Charitable Sector” covers issues like number of employees, revenues and assets, justification for government subsidies, federal programs in areas like national service and social innovation, and tax treatment of donations and assets.
IRS Provides Audit Guidance to Agents on Governance Matters (Chronicle of Philanthropy) Interesting reading regarding what the IRS is looking for in their governance reviews. Would you pass?
‘Curation’ Is the Cure for Nonprofit Blogging (Joanne’s Nonprofits Blog) One of the first questions that nonprofits have about setting up a blog for their supporters is: “What do we write about?” It’s a good question, and many nonprofits never get the answer right. Their blogs turn into self-referencing organizational messages that most people, even their supporters, tune out. We all have an expertise. Nonprofits especially have expertise. You are an expert on education, civil rights or disaster response. Your supporters must be interested in your topic, or they wouldn’t bother with you at all. Considering yourself a curator of your own nonprofit topic and expertise can be a powerful way to build content that attracts your supporters to your website again and again.
