Tagged as ‘Development Planning’




05/01/23 What’s the Right Cost Per Donor for Your Organization?

Most nonprofits acquire new donors at an up-front loss. In direct marketing terms, this loss is measured as “cost per donor.” It’s an important value that represents an organization’s investment in new donors – what each new donor “costs.” Once acquired, the expectation is that the organization’s new donors will yield some return that exceeds […]

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02/18/13 4 Reasons Your Nonprofit Needs a Monthly Giving Program

At the DMA Washington Nonprofit Conference earlier this month, I got the chance to speak about one of our favorite things – monthly giving. Yet from some corners, I still heard this: How did you convince your [board / boss / staff ] to invest in monthly giving? For sure, monthly giving isn’t always easy. […]

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04/25/10 Your Strategic Planning Checklist for April

For organizations with a July to June fiscal year, April is the time in your 12-month strategic planning cycle to fine tune details for your new fiscal year and start work on your summer-into-fall campaigns. Fortunately if you’ve stayed on top of your monthly tasks (sorry for posting this one late!), April should be a […]

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03/17/10 Your March Strategic Planning Checklist: Part Two

By now you’ve wrapped up your State of the Donor File analysis. You still have just a few tasks though from your Annual Strategic Planning Calendar to complete this month: Draft your campaign plan for the new (7/1) fiscal year. Because you’ve spent the last several months analyzing your donor file and identifying your key […]

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03/07/10 Your March Strategic Planning Checklist: Part One

This month comes in like a lion in more ways than one. For organizations with July-June fiscal years, March is the most intensive month of the annual strategic planning calendar because, among other things, it’s when you’ll complete the analysis portion of your annual State of the Donor File evaluation. This means distilling the hundreds […]

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02/07/10 Your February Strategic Planning Checklist

Strategic planning isn’t a 3-week sprint before your budget is due. Done right, it’s a year-long cycle of self-evaluation and adaptation. If your organization’s new fiscal year begins in July, here are your strategic planning priorities this month: 1. Finish data collection for your State of the Donor File evaluation and start analyzing. You’ve given […]

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10/12/09 Strategy First, Content and Tools Second

The saying “content is king” has long been a dictum of web design, referring to the importance of desirable, engaging information to a website’s success, as recently affirmed in this CNET report. But in nonprofit membership and constituency development, it’s strategy – not content (or message for that matter) – that rules. Don’t get me wrong; content […]

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09/27/09 Taking the Pulse of Your Donors

The simplest things can escape us sometimes. We get so involved in the details of inspiring people to make donations to our organizations that we forget about our donors themselves. We can tell you how our programs our doing. We can tell you our average gift, percent response, open rate, cost to raise a dollar, […]

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