Clairity Click-it: Bounty of Free Nonprofit Resources for Year-End

Sometimes the pathway forward is challenging. Let’s walk it together.

 

Friday is Veteran’s Day in the U.S., so let’s give gratitude to all those who served and serve so that others will have better lives.

That counts you in too (Big time IMHO) – so here are links to articles you may find helpful whether you’re a veteran fundraiser/nonprofit marketer or a newbie. I’m emphasizing strategies to help you with this critical year-end time of year, when folks do their most significant giving.

Plus, as usual, you’ll find plenty of free resources – downloadable templates, webinars, cheat sheets, and more.

Thanks for doing the important work that you do. It gives me great comfort in these turbulent times to know you are there. Helping. Listening. Opening yourself to understanding. Holding people accountable. Restoring faith. Extending kindness. Kicking butt when you have to. Being the very best you can be, and the best of what humankind has to offer.

You are the best, and I am grateful.

Annual Fundraising

Click-it: Year-End Fundraising Ideas: 11 Successful (Yet Underutilized) Strategies. Tina Jepson offers up these great tips on the CauseVox blog — just in time for year-end,. I’m partial to 4, 6 and 7. Easy to do, and big bang for your buck.

Click-it: 2 Stories You Must Tell During Year-End Fundraising. This is a lovely piece from Vanessa Chase Lockshin of The Storytelling Nonprofit, talking about theory of change and impact stories.  Good stuff.

Click-it: Asking for donations: 4 tips for letters, emails, text, and more. 4agoodcause has timely advice. If you don’t have #2 wrapped into this year’s appeal, do it now. I promise it will improve your results.  Also check out my Q & A interview with them: How to craft your year-end fundraising appeal – Q & A.

Click-it: 12 #GivingTuesday & Year-End Fundraising Articles To Help You Navigate The Last 60 Days Of The Year. The Fundraising Strategies & Nonprofit Tech Carnival is back, with a great collection of tips for you – there’s one from me too – and just in time for year-end fundraising!

Click-it: 28 Nonprofit Donation Page Best Practices (That Work Fast). There’s still time to tweak your donation pages. Grab a few ideas from the folks at Qgiv.

Scroll to the very bottom for more help with year-end fundraising.

Donor Retention

Click-it: Why Donor Cultivation is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread. Rachel Muir offers 13 “discovery questions” in the Nonprofit Hub Magazine to help you learn more about your donors and engage with them more effectively.

Major Gifts Fundraising

Click-it:  TRICKS or TREATS – How Do You Get and Sustain Major Gifts? Halloween is over, but the tips you’ll find in the October Halloween Nonprofit Blog Carnival are evergreen. If you missed them, check ‘em out now!

Online Fundraising

Click-it: 5 Effective Strategies for Creating Mobile-Friendly Emails. From Jen Lieberman on the eJewishPhilanthropy blog, and written with synagogues in mind, these tips works for nonprofits of all stripes.

Click-it: 5 Ways to Use Technology to Increase Donations. Some tips to optimize your online donation process – good to do before end-of-year fundraising! – from Norman Reiss of Nonprofit Bridge.

Social Media

Click-it: 5 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Donor Relationships. Yours truly here again, this time as a guest author for Nonprofit Pro, reminding you of the importance of using social media to leverage your other fundraising strategies.

Click-it: How Much Does a Social Media Management Tool Really Cost? This article by Lilach Bullock will be useful for larger nonprofits who manage multiple social media accounts and have multiple users accessing those accounts.  It explains available features, plus there’s a link to a handy cost comparison tool.

Click-it: 6 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Social Media to Strengthen Donor Relationships. Fundraising is all about relationship building. You know that, right? I write monthly about nonprofit social media on the Maximize Social Business blog, and this one’s about how relationships happen in the “online fundraising room.”

Click-it: 8 Social Media Content Ideas for Marketers. Why not borrow some of these ideas shared by Social Media Examiner to offer up some “gifts” of content and create greater online engagement with your constituents?

Food for Thought

Click-it: Four Smart Ways to Avoid Burnout for Nonprofit Professionals from Beth Kanter on the Guidestar Blog. Year-end can be a stressful time, so you may want to check this out.  Or just be sure to eat healthy, get enough sleep and get up from your desk to get some moving around breaks!

Click-it: Fundraising Barriers: The Idea of “Fundraising” is All Wrong! For years my motto has been “Philanthropy, not fundraising.” So I had to share this terrific post from Gail Perry of Fired Up Fundraising, as it meshes perfectly with my philosophy.

Click-it: Asking for Money? Compliment the Donor, Not Your Organization. It’s always great to see a spot-on piece on philanthropy in the major media.  This article from the New York Times fits the bill, quoting Tom Ahern, Jen Love and Dr. Jennifer Shang.  Good stuff about the power of being donor-centered and channeling an attitude of gratitude.

Change is Hard: Take Solace

I am deeply proud and grateful to be a part of the civil sector, a community that every day models the possibility of human interaction based on empathy, compassion and deep respect. Sometimes the path forward is difficult. We fall down or lose our way. Yet we persevere.  Our collective human need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get busy with the important work of making our world a better and more caring place propels of forward. It’s good to know we’re all in this together. Here are what others had to say this week:

Click-it: We are needed. From Mary Cahalane at Hands on Fundraising.

Click-it: Disbelief, disappointment, and fear, and why our work is more important than ever. From Vu Le at Nonprofit with Balls

Click-it: Resilience from the inimitable Seth Godin.

Click-it: What’s Next? From Roger Craver at The Agitator.

Click-it: What Really Matters by Joan Garry on The Huffington Post.

Click-it: How Will a Trump Presidency Impact Nonprofits, Fundraising and Philanthropy? From Gail Perry of Fired Up Fundraising.

Click-it: 4 Things Nonprofits Must Do the Day after a Trump Victory. From the editors at Nonprofit Quarterly.

Click-it: Five Science-Backed Strategies to Build Resilience. I found this article from the Greater Good Science Institute particularly useful.

Don’t forget to begin by taking good care of yourself and your loved ones.

Annual Fundraising

Click-it: Why Should I Give to You? [Free E-Book]. Learn how to effectively craft and communicate your value proposition and acquire more donors and dollars with this E-Book from NextAfter.

Click-it: Direct Mail Right On Target [Download Report from DMN]. There’s lots of interesting data leading to the conclusion that mail is not at all dead in an era of online communications. Plus some benchmarks: average response to in-house prospect list is 3.7%; to rented list is 1%, and to all digital channels combined is 0.67%.

Annual Report

Click-it:   Annual Report Template [Free Download]. If you haven’t prepared anything for 2016 yet, why not cheat a bit with this template from Social Solutions?

Boards

Click-it to listen: Get Your Board on Board [Free Podcast: Interview with Claire] I was recently interviewed by Nick Small on Nonprofit Hub Radio on the subject of how to overcome your board’s fear of fundraising.

Culture of Philanthropy

Click-it: Building a Culture of Philanthropy [Free Whitepaper] Download this “how to” from the Veritus Group to learn how to boost your fundraising success.

Data/Analytics

Click-it: What’s Your Data Plan – Using Analytics to Drive Fundraising Success [Free Webinar on YouTube]

Click-it: Predictive Analytics in Nonprofit Fundraising [Free Webinar on YouTube] This is a more sophisticated and very stimulating look at the topic, presented by Josh Birkholz, Author of Fundraising Analytics.

Major/Planned Gifts

Click-it: Social Media: A Maturing Channel [Free Whitepaper for Download]. Stelter offers this look at how social media can be helpful even for legacy fundraising.

Need More Help with Year-End Fundraising?

Find an abundance of tried and true year-end fundraising tips in this Solution Kit!

 

Grab my Year-End Fundraising Solution Kit – To-Do’s and Checklists. My newly expanded and revised edition is a 63-page-long, step-by-step comprehensive road map to effective year-end fundraising. After working 30+ years in the trenches, I can vouch for this stuff. It’s tried and true! Get your “To-Do’s” here.  Not satisfied? All Clairification products come with a 30-day, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee. You truly can’t lose!

Photo by Claire Axelrad – Series: “The Pathway to Passionate Philanthropy”