Tagged as ‘Donor Communications’
In January 1776, Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, was first published. It’s reported to have sold 500,000 copies in its first year. Considering that the population of the 13 colonies was around 3,000,000, a book would need to sell over 50,000,000 copies (or downloads) to reach the equivalent percentage of Americans today. Commemorating the publication’s [...]
If you’re on track with your year-end calendar, it’s probably already fall at your office – which means that reading blogs isn’t exactly on the top of your priority list. Here then is a quick list of some of the most important things not to do this fall. Don’t focus an appeal on your organization’s [...]
When have bullet points ever made you think “Wow!”? Or made you stand up and say “I need to do something about this!”? When have they ever made you cry? Never. Bullet points are the blah blah blah of communication. They convey information to our donors but they don’t connect.
Integrated direct response fundraising has long been the pursuit of forward-thinking membership and development directors. But integration remains an ongoing challenge for most organizations – almost always for the same two reasons regardless of an organization’s size, funding, or mission. The channels like to change and organizations … don’t. Still, some organizations are much further [...]
As predictive analysts and veteran direct marketers will tell you, there’s no crystal ball for really knowing whether your next direct response effort will be stellar or just so-so. But there is a remarkably accurate trick for telling whether your copy is any good before you hit send and, in turn, predicting where you might [...]
The sixth annual Bridge Conference on integrated marketing and fundraising for nonprofits ended Friday, but the great content will stay with us long after. Here are just a few words of wisdom from sessions I was lucky enough to attend at this year’s conference: “I’ve never regretted taking the high road.” – Jocelyn Harmon, Care2 [...]
“What if we just got 100,000 people to each give us a couple of bucks?” “One percent response in new donor prospecting is terrible! We should accept nothing less than 99%.” “Our donors are too old. We need to get younger donors.” “What we really need to do is focus on major donor acquisition. [...]
I often get asked when the best time is for an organization to send its year end appeal. The problem with this question, and the problem with year end appeals, is that they’re all too often viewed as single events that take place at a single moment in time. November 1, November 15, the Monday after [...]
