The Blog
Resources and News for Nonprofits
Six Lessons from #GivingTuesday Emails
As you may imagine, we received a lot of #GivingTuesday emails. This year, I reviewed them all to highlight some things that I liked and recommendations on what to avoid. For email messages that I’m highlighting, I’ve included their name. For email messages that had...
Fundraiser Pages for Facebook – What Does It Mean?
This week Facebook announced the development of a new tool that will allow nonprofits to host fundraising activities and collect contributions directly on Facebook. The new fundraiser pages are structured similarly to event pages. They allow users to contribute to a...
Custom Images for Nonprofit Facebook Posts
As you may have heard, Facebook announced the rollout of Reactions, their addition/replacement of the “Like” button. Another recent Facebook change also has a tremendous influence for how nonprofits communicate. When you share a link, Facebook searches it for any...
The Seven Different Types of Nonprofit Email Signatures
Over the last few weeks we’ve been working on a project taking place in 190+ locations throughout the United States and Canada. We’ve been communicating with staff in all of those locations. This has included a lot of email communication. While all of these folks work...
Why Nonprofits Should Listen to Reddit
Reddit can be a complicated place. One minute you’re watching a gif of a cat, the next moment you’ve strolled into an unpleasant subreddit or offensive comment thread. Even searching for an image to use for this blog post caused me to view a few images that I did not...
Communicating with a Four Year Old
How would you describe what you do to a four year old? That was the question posed in a recent Medium post by Dean Vipond. Invited to talk to an elementary school classroom, what he thought was a presentation to older students, with a greater understanding of what...
Fear, Planning, Communication, and Implementation
Shifting from brainstorming and discussion to implementation can be taxing for many nonprofits. It’s often easier to think about the future. Implementation takes commitment, resources, and acknowledgement that you can fail. This week Steve Scheier wrote an article in...
Just Stop
How many times have you started an email or conversation with the following: I just wanted to say... I just wanted to ask... This is just my opinion... Just, as a word, has a few definitions, including an expression of fairness, a description of immediacy, and a...
Three Ways to Retain Top Volunteers and Supporters
I reconnected with a friend recently. During our communication, I asked about a fundraising volunteer project that I had worked with her on previously. She shared that she was still supporting it and over the years she had raised over $30,000. And then added, “But it...
The Struggle to Collaborate
There are a lot of nonprofits doing the exact same thing. Not literally - clearly each nonprofit has their own methodology, belief system, and implementation. But many social organizations are attempting to serve the same populations and solve the same problems, while...