This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Nothing Komen for the Cure does surprises me anymore. They sell deep-fried chicken to raise money to cure breast cancer. They sue other nonprofits that use “for the cure” in any variation in their name. Now, they’re flexing their muscle and shutting off the funding to Planned Parenthood. For Komen, it’s just another day being a big, arrogant SOB that has swallowed too much of its own public relations and is drunk with power and eager to show its fight.
Erica Mills. Last week on the main Nonprofit Marketing Guide site (you are reading the blog now), I published an article called, “ Blah, Blah, Blah: What to Do When You Write Too Much. ” In today’s guest post, Erica Mills of Claxon Marketing takes it to the next step by showing how specific words can actually debilitate your messaging.
At the end of the Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits is a nine-page “Nonprofit Tech Checklist” which I have copied and pasted below. Each item on the list is discussed in the book and some items won’t make sense unless you have read the book, but most will. I hope you find it useful. That was my number one priority when writing the book… to create a comprehensive, useful social and mobile media how-to guide for nonprofits.
Nonprofit’s can be incredibly crushing places to work. We give all we have because we believe in our cause. Our passion is admirable but leads to bad choices about our own lives. I’d argue this is especially true for fundraisers. People don’t really get what we do. And when we’re successful, the bar gets raised! Either way, it’s like killing the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs in hopes of getting more gold.
Your financial statements hold powerful insights—but are you truly paying attention? Many finance professionals focus on the income statement while overlooking key signals hidden in the balance sheet and cash flow statement. Understanding these numbers can unlock smarter decision-making, uncover risks, and drive long-term success. Join David Worrell, accomplished CFO, finance expert, and author, for an engaging, nontraditional take on reading financial statements.
In today’s economy, many organizations are faced with ever-shrinking budgets. Luckily, fundraising doesn’t necessarily have to involve high amounts of upfront capital. The following are 10 cheap fundraising ideas for when money is tight: 50/50 raffle – This is one of the best cheap fundraising ideas, because the only cost to the organization is a roll of raffle tickets.
Pew Research has just released this study on how Americans use their mobile phones to assist with in-store purchasing decisions. There’s an underlying phenomenon here that’s highly relevant, I think, to nonprofit fundraising. Pew reports that more than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store to seek help with their purchase decision: 38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase th
I’m trying to learn more about volunteering and employee engagement initiatives for businesses that want more than the transactional cause marketing campaigns I specialize in. These are the days when I wish employee volunteering expert Chris Jarvis lived closer to me and not in the home of terrible baseball, Toronto. The employee engagement side of cause marketing is mostly new to me.
I’m trying to learn more about volunteering and employee engagement initiatives for businesses that want more than the transactional cause marketing campaigns I specialize in. These are the days when I wish employee volunteering expert Chris Jarvis lived closer to me and not in the home of terrible baseball, Toronto. The employee engagement side of cause marketing is mostly new to me.
The apology that Susan G. Komen for the Cure issued on Friday was the first step. The obligatory resignations are next. But if Komen is going to repair the damage done by its behavior last week, they have quite a few more steps in the process. “What should Komen do next?” That’s the question many of you have asked me, and it was certainly the top question asked of me in my role as nonprofit marketing pundit last week.
With 10.4 million registered users, Pinterest hit the 10 million-user benchmark last week making it the fastest growing website ever. My theory on why Pinterest has become so popular so fast is that it has arrived at at time when people are increasing becoming overwhelmed by the volume of tweets, status updates, and “Breaking News!” being thrown at them 24/7.
I’m so sorry! I forgot to tell you that I’m guiding a limited number of organizations to strengthen their messaging this spring. And there are just a few seats left for the next Message Focus Project , starting March 6. Learn more here. Over the years, I’ve often been asked by nonprofit communicators like you to offer training on message development, and I just wasn’t able to provide it beyond occasional speaking engagements and workshops.
Thank you! As a fundraiser for a nonprofit cause, you are changing the world. Making it a better place. We need people like you! Loving the askers. If we’re good at fundraising, we spend considerable time thinking about how to best thank our donors. We throw galas, write notes, set up tours and appointments with the Executive Director. This is perfectly appropriate as they are the ones that fund what we do.
Traditional budgeting and forecasting methods can no longer keep pace with today’s rapidly evolving business environment. Static budgets, rigid annual forecasts, and outdated financial models limit an organization’s ability to adapt to market shifts and economic uncertainty. To stay ahead, finance leaders must leverage a future-forward approach—one that leverages real-time data, predictive analytics, and continuous planning to drive smarter financial decisions.
You know how much I love to see fundraisers using video! Here’s a 24-page guide from YouTube — YouTube-for-Good — advising on how to tell better stories and get them noticed (i.e, more visible to search engines). They’re also sponsoring a one-day video boot camp for nonprofits in San Francisco on April 2. You must apply to attend (applications due February 27).
Nice Superbowl ad for rescue dogs. It ties into a Facebook Like promotion at Budlight’s page that rewards each like with a one dollar donation to the Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation , up to $250,000. I also think it was probably the best ad of the game, admitting that the other ads were pretty lackluster. You can watch the commercial here.
With great pleasure, I present another guest post today, this time from Claire Meyerhoff. It’s been faaaarrrrr tooooo loooong since Claire wrote for us! Enjoy! ~Kivi. Guest Post by Claire Meyerhoff. Claire Meyerhoff. At NonprofitMarketingGuide.com, we kid about jargon all the time. Kivi and I regularly lace our nonprofit marketing jokes with terms like “capacity building” and “impacting youth,” which says a lot about us as marketing geeks with a high-concept (!
If your nonprofit has yet to start using Pinterest , then hopefully new data released for January 2012 illuminating that Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined will motivate you to start pinning – or at the very least to sign up and reserve your first choice of usernames (hint, hint!). To get started, here’s a step-by-step tutorial for nonprofits and a list of nonprofits already using Pinterest effectively.
Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand
Do you really know your donors? Not just what they give, but who they are? 👥 In this interactive session, we’ll break down how nonprofits can use behavioral indicators (affinity, recency, frequency, and monetary value) to build prospecting segments that go beyond wealth screening and actually align with donor identity. You’ll walk away with practical strategies to move beyond basic demographics and cultivate supporters based on how they already engage with you!
Ever wonder how charitable your city is? You’re in luck because Convio recently released their report on the 273 most generous cities across the United States. Convio analyzed cities with total population of more than 100,000 based on per capita online giving and the total amount donated through the Convio platform. The average gift size remained steady in 2011 at about $65 with more than $435M donated to charities.
In the last 24 hours, I’ve heard 6 different commentators talk about the polarization of our US government being exacerbated by the fact that no one socializes anymore. Ok. I was one of the people. And I was talking to my aunt and uncle in a restaurant in Hanover, NH. But then on NHPR , I heard a person talking about how our US government was designed to run on compromise.
Officially The Agitator is a blog about nonprofit fundraising and communications. So I’m recommending you read Getting Attention’s Nancy Schwartz’s excellent analysis of the Komen vs. Planned Parenthood debacle from the perspective of what makes for effective (and ineffective communications) and smart fundraising (on Planned Parenthood’s part) in response to threat.
Social media consultant and Pinterest Superuser Noland Hoshino joins Megan and me to discuss the phenomenal growth of Pinterest as a social platform and how companies, causes and cause marketers can reach its 10 million+, primarily-female users to visually capture their brand story and why they’d want to. Listen NOW! We’ve yet to see any active cause marketing campaigns on Pinterest but Megan , me and Noland pontificate on ways cause marketers could use this medium for good.
Payroll compliance is a cornerstone of business success, yet for small and midsize businesses, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of federal, state, and local regulations. Mistakes can lead to costly penalties and operational disruptions, making it essential to adopt advanced solutions that ensure accuracy and efficiency.
I worked my way through my snail mail inbox today and here’s what I found: It’s a thank you card from Regan Walsh of Flying Horse Farms. Here’s what was inside: A brief, but personal and heartful thank you for the free webinar I did last week (Note: timely, related to my “gift” and what it means to her/how it will be used).
As Facebook Timeline continues to roll out to individual users site wide, it’s worth noting that three ‘Giving” apps have been launched in Facebook’s new App Gallery for Timeline: Causes , FundRazr , and Artez Interactive : Organized under the category of “Giving” in the new App Gallery for Timeline , two of the apps focus on social fundraising (friends asking friends to donate to causes and their favorite nonprofits) and one is a simple Share-on-Facebook-th
Martin Luther King inspired me to ask fellow bloggers to join me in the January Nonprofit Blog Carnival , to “pick any dream you have—for your cause, organization or the nonprofit sector—and share it and how you plan to make it real.” I am inspired and energized by the richness of your contributions. I urge you to digest them to energize yourself and to focus you and your colleagues on the pathways to increased impact and results in 2012: 1) Dreams of productive changes in the way nonprofi
Ever since social media was deemed the coolest communications channel on the block, nonprofits are continuing to question what kind of impact social media has on their bottom line. Wildfire , a social marketing platform surveyed a variety of marketers and found that marketers believe social media is valuable to increase brand awareness and dialogue but will soon begin to measure ROI from a more traditional perspective – attributable sales and costs.
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.
Bryan Miller at blog Giving in a digital world has made a herculean effort over the month of January to unload a pile of insights about online and mobile fundraising. They’re well-worth looking through … Bryan has a strong fundraising background, both on the agency (Merkle, Rapp Collins) and client (Worldvision, Cancer Research UK) sides.
Swoop is a new online content service that expands the potential for web pages to deliver deeper engagement with users. When you hover over keywords or icons additional content is revealed without ever leaving the page. Right now the service is just being used with food and recipes , but cause marketing could be next. Say the online grocer Peapod in New York uses Swoop and when visitors scroll over certain products a window opens with information on The Food Bank for New York City and how a po
Julia Reich. For those of you interested in the ongoing Komen-Planned Parenthood story, I will continue to update yesterday’s post at the bottom of the original content. Today we are moving on with a new topic. Our resident design expert, Julia Reich, is back with the latest trends in logos. And if you are embarrassed with your organization’s current logo or think it’s just time for a change, be sure to join us February 8th for Julia’s webinar called, “ Help!
UPDATED 2/26/12: Please note that the best practices listed below are a work in progress and are updated regularly. To be alerted of when new best practices are posted, please subscribe to the Nonprofit Tech 2.0 e-Newsletter. Also, since the Google+ Pages launched after the release of Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits , please consider this blog post a supplement to the book.
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.
Video, infographics, still photography, and even a t-shirt or cap featuring your call to action are all examples of visual media nonprofits are using to tell stories in powerful ways! When executed well, they cut through the clutter and leave a mental image that resonates and is remembered. Here’s an example: I had several meetings in the city (New York City, that is) yesterday, and was astonished to walk up to this compelling infographic on the side of a bus shelter.
I’m a Mac girl myself. But I was fascinated to read about Microsoft’s new Windows logo and the fact that it has changed about as often as Windows itself has come out with updates. At Mission Minded we encourage our nonprofit clients to change their logo as infrequently as possible. Why? Because changing a logo is [.].
Regular Agitator readers know I’m a big fan of online videos to support nonprofit fundraising and communications. Many, many nonprofits have now dipped their toes in the online video water. So go ahead, enter the 6th annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards sponsored by YouTube, with the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) and See3 Communications.
For six years now, the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards has been shining a spotlight on all the innovative ways that nonprofits use video. The contest is about moving the field of nonprofit video forward and encouraging cause-video creators to try new approaches that make their work different. Different is just what The Case Foundation is looking for in this year’s contest.
Speaker: Duke Heninger, Partner and Fractional CFO at Ampleo & Creator of CFO System
Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Duke Heninger, 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.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 27,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
278 
Let's personalize your content