November, 2013

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McDonald’s Lesson to Companies: Charity, Impact Better be on the Menu

Selfish Giving

'McDonald’s has a public relations problem. In a new report, Clowning Around with Charity , McDonald’s is portrayed as cheap, deceptive and selfish. Here are the highlights. McDonald’s charitable giving is just.32 percent ($34 million) of its pre-tax profits. Compare that to the one percent of pre-tax profits that generous companies donate to good causes.

Marketing 278
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Why Common Core Will Fail

Ken Goldstein

'You''ve likely heard or read about Common Core by now. The latest in educational "fixes," promoted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Governors Association, and the Obama administration, the Common Core initiative was developed "to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce." And it will fail to improve our failing schools, wasting time, resources, and money in the process.

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New Amazon Program Enables Shoppers to Easily Donate to Their Favorite Nonprofits

Nonprofit Tech for Good

'AmazonSmile is a new program that enables Amazon shoppers to easily donate 0.5% of their purchases ($.50 per $100 spent) to their favorite U.S.-based nonprofits. With $26.5 billion in sales projected for the fourth quarter for 2013 alone, up to $13.25 million in funds could be raised. Through a partnership with GuideStar USA , over one million nonprofits are already listed in the AmazonSmile database and all shoppers need to do is search for and then select their favorite nonprofit to have 0.5%

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Is your nonprofit ready for #GivingTuesday?

Fundraising Coach

'Giving Tuesday is right around the corner. Does your nonprofit have a plan? What is #GivingTuesday? Here in the United States, the Friday after Thanksgiving has become known as " Black Friday "-- it''s the day many retailers sell so much that they end the year "in the black." A few years back, online retailers decided to jump on this wave of sales by creating " Cyber Monday ," the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Retail 110
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Less Stress, More Success: Accounting Best Practices & Processes for 2025

Speaker: Amanda Adams, Fractional CFO, CPA

Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Amanda Adams, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.

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Walk In The Donor’s Shoes

The Agitator

'Editor’s Note: This guest post by international fundraiser Francesco Ambroghetti was triggered by our piece, Your Call Is Important To Us. Please Continue To Hold. At last month’s International Fundraising Conference in the Netherlands, participants in a Master Class made calls and online visits to a variety of charities posing as donors attempting to make a contribution.

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Does Brand Drive Your Organization’s Culture?

Mission Minded

'We often say that your brand is the sum of the experiences your audience has with your organization. It’s as much about the experience of receiving your annual report as it is about seeing a van with your logo cut someone off in traffic. Brand is an idea—an idea that takes shape in the minds […].

Culture 86

More Trending

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Story Time: Not Just for Babies

Getting Attention

'Guest blogger, Chapin Cole is a proud Millennial who works in nonprofit development in the California Bay Area. She blogs on getting successful (yet stress-free) as a nonprofit staffer. Who cares what your nonprofit is doing to change the world? I don’t. I’m busy; I don’t have time to read about programs and services, how many people you’ve lifted out of poverty, or how many children you’ve taught to read.

Poverty 85
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19 Holiday Gift Programs That Benefit Nonprofits

Nonprofit Tech for Good

'As follow-up to 29 Online Gift Stores That Benefit Nonprofits , below are 19 nonprofits that are offering symbolic gifts and adoptions this holiday season. These gift programs are ideal for socially and environmentally conscious holiday shoppers that would prefer their spending directly empower nonprofits. They also make excellent gifts for activists and advocates of global development, environmental conservation, and wildlife protection.

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Who pays the tab at a meeting with a donor?

Fundraising Coach

'During a recent coaching call , my client asked me to walk her step-by-step through an upcoming donor meeting. I love doing this! We established her top goal for the dinner, talked about the environment, and scripted a couple questions for her to ask as the meal progressed. We even worked on keywords she could use should an opportunity to make an ask arise.

Retention 105
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Snickers Bars And Matching Gifts

The Agitator

'Which Matching Gift Challenge formula works best? (A) 1:1 matching grant (“An anonymous donor will match your contribution dollar for dollar.”) (B) 2:1 matching grant (“triples your donation”) (C) 3:1 matching grant (“quadruples your donation”) The anecdotal (as opposed to scientific) ‘rule’ in our trade is that higher match levels are better than lower match levels.

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Recognition Powers High-Performance — If You Do it Right

Speaker: Radhika Samant and Todd Wuestenberg

Employee recognition has often been deemed a "feel-good" initiative, tied closely to rewards. While we understand its importance, we tend to associate recognition with intangible outcomes like engagement and sentiment, rather than direct impacts on retention and high performance. In today’s workplace, the true ROI of recognition lies in its ability to regenerate tangible, business-driven results.

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Is Your Event On-Brand?

Mission Minded

'This time of year, nonprofit organizations often celebrate their important work (and their coworkers) with parties or other special events. Yours might be a five-course fundraising dinner, or it might be a casual Christmas party at a colleague’s home. Whether your event is conventional or inventive, public or private, it needs to be on-brand for […].

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How Local Nonprofits Can Use Mobile to Beat Goliath

Selfish Giving

'This Mediapost article has some good news for brick-and-mortar businesses: the skyrocketing rise of mobile may actually be good for business. As mobile grows, these businesses have trembled at the prospect of smartphone carrying customers showrooming their stores for better selection and prices online. While true in some cases, the author contends that mobile is helping to bring customers closer to physical businesses.

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Board Members: Your Communication Kings & Queens

Getting Attention

'Guest blogger Susan Bowie is the Director of Nonprofit Strategy at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. She’s a passionate and talented force for good, helping organizations in the region develop their nonprofit marketing finesse. Have you crowned your board members yet? These Kings and Queens of Communications are–or should be–your organization’s number one messengers.

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HOW TO: Reserve a Custom URL for Your Nonprofit’s Google+ Page

Nonprofit Tech for Good

'Last year Google+ began enabling page admins to reserve custom URLs for their Google+ Pages, but the service was offered to a relatively small number of verified pages of well-known brands and celebrities. However, last week Google+ began rolling out the ability to reserve a custom URL, such as google.com/+nonprofitorgs , to all page admins provided that your page has been active for at least 30 days, has a minimum of ten followers, has uploaded a profile photo, and has been linked to your web

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Why Every Small Business Needs an HCM Solution: A Comprehensive Guide

Managing HR tasks like payroll, compliance, and employee data can overwhelm small businesses. That’s where a Human Capital Management (HCM) solution comes in. Our eBook, Why Every Small Business Needs an HCM Solution: A Comprehensive Guide , shows how an HCM system automates tedious processes, ensuring your business stays compliant and efficient. You’ll learn how to simplify payroll, eliminate costly errors, and empower your employees with self-service tools.

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3 Things to Make Your Ask Easier

Fundraising Coach

'Don''t be chicken about asking! This is the time of the year to be asking people for money. Based on conversations with clients from around the world, December 31 is a powerful motivator for people''s giving. As I''ve been telling my Fundraising Kick members , you need to be out asking people between now and December 31 ! ( Click here to tweet that.).

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Thank You MailChimp

The Agitator

'As this study from email firm MailChimp indicates, a single word in the subject line can make a big difference in open rates. To reach its conclusions, in Choose Your Words Wisely MailChimp studied about 24 billion delivered emails, looking at subject lines composed in the aggregate of approximately 22,000 distinct words. Some findings … Personalization works — especially using both first and last names. ‘Free’ isn’t guaranteed to work, but interestingly, ‘Fr

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A Story You Have To Read

Mission Minded

'If you’re like me, you get 20 – 40 emails a day that say you simply must read them. These emails range from scams to spam to promotions for things I don’t want or need. I recently got an email whose artful copy motivated me to read on. (View the email online.) It didn’t start […].

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Tis the Season for Bad Cause Marketing

Selfish Giving

'I couldn’t make up this stuff if I tried. I found these two examples of bad cause marketing on the same day! That’s a first. As first reported in Nonprofit Quarterly , a New Mexico company sponsored a Coyote Kill Contest this weekend, saying that half the proceeds will go to the Children’s Outdoor Adventure Association. According to the contest organizers, the nonprofit takes kids with cancer, disabilities, etc. on outdoor adventures.

Marketing 248
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Best Practices to Streamline Compensation Management: A Foundation for Growth

Speaker: Joe Sharpe and James Carlson

Payroll optimization can be one of the most time-consuming and complex factors of small business management. Yet, organizations that crack the code on streamlining employee compensation often discover innovative avenues for growth. With the right strategies in place, outsourcing and streamlining payroll processes can result in substantial time and resource savings.

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Nonprofit Storytelling Breaking Bad Style

Getting Attention

'Whether you love, hate or have never seen Breaking Bad , there’s a lot to learn from its emotionally intense, can’t-stop-watching storytelling. Pay special attention to these to-dos for your nonprofit storytelling: Remain flexible, i.e. stay relevant—If your network’s perspective, wants or needs change, change your stories (and the rest of your messages) too to ensure connection.

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3 Ways to Help Donors Recruit Donors

Nonprofit Marketing Blog

'Our next Nonprofit 911 webinar guest, Darian Rodriguez, is a big proponent of leveraging your organization’s year-end momentum to boost individual giving. Promoting your cause on #GivingTuesday is a great start, but you can take this a step further by empowering donors to promote your work on their own all year long. Here’s my true story and three things I learned about donors recruiting donors: The button that sparked a donation while waiting in line for coffee.

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Emergency relief in the Philippines and fundraising for your nonprofit

Fundraising Coach

'Congratulations to Facebook and the Red Cross for making it ridiculously easy to support those devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines! Even if you don''t have the connections or relationship to get this type of top billing on Facebook, there are loads of ways you and your nonprofit can support the relief efforts. Support typhoon relief in mission-related ways.

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Death Of A Hero

The Agitator

'This week our community lost a great and largely unsung hero. Michael MacLeod, co-founder and chair of Public Interest Data, Inc (PIDI), died on Wednesday leaving behind his wife Whitney, his daughter Kafi, and a legion of friends and causes whose lives he touched for the better. I don’t use the term ‘hero’ lightly. In our field I generally reserve the term for those few who understand and put into practice the responsibility that comes with success.

91
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How to Scale Recurring Giving for Sustainable Growth

Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand

Is your organization ready to build a recurring giving program that not only sustains but also propels your mission forward? 🚀 In this new webinar with industry visionary Tim Sarrantonio, we’ll guide you through the critical steps to establishing and scaling a successful recurring giving program. Whether you’re starting fresh or enhancing an existing program, this session will provide the strategies you need to deepen donor relationships and secure long-term support!

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Infographic: How Foundations Use Social Media

Care2

'While the majority of nonprofit organizations have a social media presence, only 45% of foundations use social media. The Foundation Center surveyed over 1,000 foundations across the U.S. to dig deeper into what’s trending with foundations and social media. My firm Rad Campaign had an opportunity to dig into the survey data and team up with the Foundation Center to produce an infographic that reveals some interesting trends.

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New Book Offers Honest, Humorous Take on Nonprofit World

Selfish Giving

'I’ve worked for and with nonprofits for twenty years, but it isn’t always easy to describe to people what it’s really like. The challenges, the the rewards…the stupidity. Thanks to Jennifer Maher I don’t have to! I can just give people her book: Nonprofit Nonsense: How to Survive and Thrive in the Crazy World of Nonprofit Business.

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How to Fundraise in the Wake of Disaster

Getting Attention

'As I read accounts of Typhoon Haiyan survivors struggling for basic needs, I’m struck by the number of lives that have been taken and touched by this disaster in the Philippines. That’s a significant communications challenge for the nonprofit organizations that work delivering aid : How to mobilize giving while communicating respectfully about their efforts and impact on the ground?

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Fundraising is not really about money

Nonprofit Marketing Blog

'“Fundraising is not really about money. It’s about people.” Fundraising expert Larry C. Johnson, author of The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising , challenges nonprofits to look at the bigger picture to create a sustainable funding model for their missions. As you execute your final fundraising campaigns for 2013, make sure you are planning for long-term success instead of just short-term dollar gains.

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Engage, Empower, Excel: Transforming Performance in the New Era of Work

Speaker: Radhika Samant and Adri Glover

The world of work has fundamentally changed. The series of waves that the pandemic began have rippled through the Great Resignation, quiet quitting, the Great Regret, and other eloquent phrases that boil down to the same thing: people aren’t engaged at work or enabled to perform at their best. The truth is that engagement and enablement is more important than ever, but how we do it is the critical differentiator for many organizations.

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4 Easy Ways to Become Designated as a Planned Gift Beneficiary

iMarketSmart

'Recently I found myself wondering… “why aren’t we promoting beneficiary designations more?” A beneficiary designation is by far the simplest way to create a planned gift. Plus it’s a great way to avoid probate. And anyone can do it easily. A donor just needs a pen, a beneficiary designation form, and the desire to create a legacy gift.

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Thoughts On National Philanthropy Day

The Agitator

'Around the globe today, more than 100 communities and 50,000 people will have participated in events and celebrations marking National Philanthropy Day. These events, much like the one we attended on Tuesday organized by the Miami Chapter of the AFP included award ceremonies, galas, luncheons, seminars and other special activities. Outstanding donors, volunteers, corporations, foundations, small businesses, youth in philanthropy, and others are honored in recognition of their work in improving

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Tips to Manage Facebook Embeds and Typos

Care2

'Facebook is pretty picky about what you can and cannot do on their platform, but the available tools and options are beginning to shift as they test what works for people and orgs, and what doesn''t. It''s important for nonprofits to stay on top of the newest trends, and to utilize new tools effectively. Embeds. A new option for nonprofits'' status updates, though, is the ability to embed your Facebook statuses in a blog post or on a website.

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CauseTalk Radio Ep73: New York YMCA Reflects on Hurricane Sandy Lessons

Selfish Giving

'Today on CauseTalk Radio , Megan and I talk to Gary Laermer , Senior Vice President & Chief Development Officer of the YMCA of Greater New York , about lessons learned from Hurricane Sandy one year later. The YMCA of Greater New York was at ground zero for Hurricane Sandy. The Y was caught between dealing with the damage to several of its 22 facilities and using its resources to aid the displaced victims of the storm.

Education 198
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Pricing for Profit: How to Set, Negotiate, and Succeed

Speaker: Igli Laci, Strategic Finance Leader

In today’s competitive market, pricing is more than just a number — it’s the cornerstone of profitability. The right pricing strategy ensures that you capture the true value of your offering, paving the way for sustainable growth and long-term success. Join Igli Laci, Strategic Finance Leader, in this exclusive session where he will explore how a well-crafted pricing approach balances customer perception with business objectives, creating a powerful tool for securing both competitive advantage a