September, 2012

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CauseTalk Radio Ep25: Local Agency Goes Bald for Cancer Causes

Selfish Giving

On today’s show, Megan and I talk to Jeff Freedman , Founder & CEO of Small Army & Small Army for a Cause. Jeff and his agency are behind Be Bold, Go Bald! , an effort that has supporters nationwide wearing bald caps to raise money for 25 local and national cancer organizations. Since its inception in 2009, participants have raised $500,000.

Marketing 265
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Clinging to Clichés?

Nonprofit Marketing Guide

Claire Meyerhoff. Last week Claire Meyerhoff shared her writing style icon with us and encouraged you to get your own. This week she is back with how to freshen up those boring old cliches. ~ Kivi. Guest Post by Claire Meyerhoff. Our nonprofit writing is filled with worn-out clichés like “make a difference,” “having an impact,” “building bridges,” and “critical programs.”.

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Want to drive online giving? Send a letter

Fundraising Coach

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 is a growing source for online gifts.

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Make A Good First Impression Online

Get Fully Funded

Did you know that most donors check out your website before they make a gift ?? And if your website doesn’t make a good first impression, you’ll lose the donor and the gift faster than you can say ‘goodbye online donation.’. Your website doesn’t have to be fancy. In fact, the simpler, the better. It just needs to look professional, clean, and inviting.

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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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50 Nonprofits Every U.S. Politican Should Follow on Twitter

Nonprofit Tech for Good

The 50 nonprofits listed below are tackling some of the most important economic, social and political issues of our time. They are active in our communities, in our schools, and have valuable knowledge and experience that our nation’s elected officials could learn from and be inspired by, and yet very few U.S. politicians follow any nonprofits on Twitter.

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Multiscreen Is The Message

The Agitator

Google last week released a remarkable study on how people access and use digital content these days. It’s an easy ‘must read’ with this excellent infographic presentation provided via TechCrunch. The bad news for all you old-timers out there … only 10% of our daily media interactions are based on old-fashioned radio, newspapers and magazines; fully 90% — 4.4 hours worth of our leisure time — are ‘screen-based’ We spend our digital time on four pri

More Trending

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Using Social Media in Fundraising

Nonprofit Marketing Guide

On Friday, I taught a workshop called Social Media: Your On-Ramp to Future Fundraising at the annual conference of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits. I’m sharing the deck with you here. Social Media: Your On-Ramp to Future Fundraising from Kivi Leroux Miller. While everyone wants to focus on peer-to-peer fundraising in social media, you can actually use social media to support your fundraising in many different ways, including the six ways we focused on.

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Lying to donors or good business sense?

Fundraising Coach

There have been some pretty high profile news stories of direct mail firms and telemarketers pocketing 75% to 85% of the money raised for a charity. The latest was reported yesterday on NPR reporting on a Bloomberg investigation of InfoCision’s work for charities like the American Cancer Society. 75% to 85%? That prompts the question: What were they thinking?

Ethics 101
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3 things you must know about how your audience is using technology

Nonprofit Marketing Blog

Today I call your attention to a fantastic presentation by Google via SocialFish. It shows how consumers seamlessly shift among devices throughout the day - which is critical for those of us in nonprofit marketing and fundraising to understand. It is well worth your time and attention, so I’m including it in this post. Don’t have time to flip through the whole deck below?

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Five Types of Nonprofit Tweets Guaranteed to Get Retweeted

Nonprofit Tech for Good

@ NonprofitOrgs follows more than 120,000 nonprofits, nonprofit staff and nonprofit service providers. Now, of course it’s humanly impossible to follow the tweets of that many Twitter accounts, so to make the chaos manageable I organize my favorite nonprofits and those whose tweets consistently stand out from the rest into Twitter Lists. However, at least 10 times a day I go to my “Home” view and scan through hundreds of tweets hoping to find new nonprofits to retweet or list,

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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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Who Are You Writing To?

The Agitator

All the great fundraising copywriters agree on one key piece of advice … construct a very clear archetypal image (demographically, psychographically, culturally) of the individual you are writing to, and then write as though you were speaking to that person face-to-face. Most fundraising copywriters these days probably have in their mind’s eye some version of a Baby Boomer (or older) as they contemplate their audience.

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Stop Focusing on Tools

Selfish Giving

We have all these tools – computers, web sites, pinups, social networks, QR Codes, mobile technology – but we’re not sure how they work or what they’re for. Often times we expect them to do things they can’t do. A hammer doesn’t make a home. Its job is to pound in nail. It’s a tool. We need to set aside our tools and focus on what will truly build our success.

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Can You Explain Your Org’s Voice, Tone, and Style?

Nonprofit Marketing Guide

We often talk about nonprofit personality or brand, and how it’s more than just your logo and color palette. It’s also the style or voice or tone of your communications. But what does that mean exactly? If you were to look it up, you’d find some conflict among writers about the differences, but I like to think of it this way: Your Voice.

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3 more contrarian tips for writing successful fundraising letters

Fundraising Coach

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 years.

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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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6 ways to make your organization value marketing

Nonprofit Marketing Blog

1. Don’t tell your nonprofit to value marketing… And don’t call it marketing. When people tell me their organization doesn’t value marketing, they typically say something like this: “I tell my boss why marketing is important and why he should care about it. I tell him we absolutely must do X, Y and Z because marketing is so valuable.

Values 76
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To the Small Nonprofits on the Social Web: 5,000 is the Magic Number

Nonprofit Tech for Good

I wanted to give some encouragement to all the small and medium-sized nonprofits out there on the Social Web that tweet, share and post regularly with the hope of growing their communities and inspiring social good – some feedback I received last week from Line Storgaard-Conley, Director of Digital and Social Media Strategy at Safe Kids Worldwide : Remember back when you came to present at our conference in 2008 and told everyone that 5,000 fans was the magic number – that once we go

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Coca-Cola Fundraising

The Agitator

Each afternoon at around 2:30 the daily gem-filled missive from Jeff Brook’s Future Fundraising Now arrives in my e-mailbox. Part wit, part iconoclast, almost always spot on, Jeff is merciless on much of the foolishness – branding studies, focus groups, ‘creative’ advertising, laborious organization-centered copy – that destroys effective fundraising.

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HuffPost Live: Is Chase Giving Cause Washing?

Selfish Giving

This was a fun segment I did with HuffPost Live last night. It was great to join Beth Kanter and Jack Ucciferri in discussing Chase Communtiy Giving and corporate giving in general.… Keep reading.

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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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Social Media Crisis Communications for Nonprofits

Nonprofit Marketing Guide

Last Tuesday, I presented a workshop on social media crisis communications for the Virginia Association of Fund Raising Executives and I’m sharing the deck with you here. Crisis Communications in Social Media for Nonprofits from Kivi Leroux Miller. We reviewed three different case studies from the American Red Cross, the Humane Society of the United States, and Komen for the Cure, pulling out dos and don’ts as we went along.

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Political junk mail can hurt your fall fundraising letters

Fundraising Coach

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 noisy in the mail box.

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The therapy post: What to do when you’re at a low

Nonprofit Marketing Blog

Trying to save the world is tough work. You’re going to have low days, and you’re going to get cranky. At least I do. Plenty. So what do you do when you’re at your most drained? You give a little more. It sounds paradoxical, but that extra little generous bit sometimes fills you up - and recharges your batteries (to mix metaphors) - more than anything else can.

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LinkedIn for Good Launches Board Connect for Nonprofits

Nonprofit Tech for Good

Launched today, LinkedIn Board Connect for Nonprofit Organizations is a new board member recruiting program that enables nonprofits to easily tap into LinkedIn’s 175+ million strong network of professionals. With nonprofits needing to fill approximately two million empty board seats annually, LinkedIn Board Connect could be the missing link in helping nonprofits make board member recruitment a much easier and more rewrding process.

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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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Coca-Cola Fundraising

The Agitator

Each afternoon at around 2:30 the daily gem-filled missive from Jeff Brook’s Future Fundraising Now arrives in my e-mailbox. Part wit, part iconoclast, almost always spot on, Jeff is merciless on much of the foolishness – branding studies, focus groups, ‘creative’ advertising, laborious organization-centered copy – that destroys effective fundraising.

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Selfish Giving 4.0 is Here!

Selfish Giving

Since I started writing Selfishgiving.com in December 2004, my site has undergone three redesigns. This latest is my fourth and the work of Kansas-based Mikhaela Craig and Boston’s Caitlin DiMare Oliver. The Kansas-Boston connection was a powerful one as these two gals have worked a lot together. I highly recommend both of them. I also recommend Headway Themes , the framework on which my WordPress blog is built.

Marketing 206
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Creative Ideas for Nonprofit Writers for October and Beyond

Nonprofit Marketing Guide

“Content is King,” they say. While that may be true, “they” don’t mention how hard it is trying to come up with fresh ideas that resonate with your readers. Inspiration can be hard to come by some days, but that’s where our Monthly Nonprofit Writing Prompts come in. Every month we send out an e-newsletter designed specifically to help you come up with ideas for your newsletter articles, blog posts and social network updates.

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Nonprofit fundraising for the one person shop

Fundraising Coach

A few months ago, my colleague Pamela Grow released a new book specifically for nonprofits with a “one person” fundraising shop. This isn’t just theory for her, she actually has been successful as a one person shop. So, since I love small shops-and even contributed a chapter to this book-I interviewed her about her approach. Here is some of the transcript of some that interview.

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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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Two great (free) ways to advance your cause

Nonprofit Marketing Blog

Today, I want to pass on two really fun resources for your mission. 1. My hero Tiffany Shlain has created an amazing new two-minute film with free customized versions for nonprofits all over the world. Over the course of six months, she asked people from all over the world to send videos of themselves feeling their heartbeat and thinking about what it means.

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11 Nonprofits Pioneering the Windows Phone

Nonprofit Tech for Good

When nonprofits launch or consider launching a smartphone app, an iPhone app is usually their first choice with an Android app a distant second. Launching a third version of a smartphone app is extremely rare, but with the release of Windows 8 Pro on October 26 for desktop and tablets compatible with the design and functionality of the Windows Phone , nonprofits could very soon be adding a third option to their suite of smartphone apps.

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The Online Yield From Direct Mail

The Agitator

Stacy Guidice at Grizzard sent us these interesting stats on the extent to which first-time online gifts are driven by direct mail. Analysts at Grizzard matched first-time online gifts against mailing lists used in parallel for one of their clients, Rescue Missions. A median of 35% of first-time online gifts could be matched back to direct mail appeals — with highs of 62% and 60% in two cases.

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CauseTalk Radio Ep24: The Role of Choice in Cause Marketing

Selfish Giving

Today, Megan and I interview researcher Stefanie Robinson of North Carolina State University on a recent series of studies about consumer choice in cause marketing campaigns. We learn that giving consumers a choice is often (but not always) a good idea in cause campaigns, particularly when the consumers are collectivists (Don’t know what a collectivist is?

Marketing 193
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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