Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
It’s a new day. What will you do with it? Will you march forward, backward or get stuck in place? Hopefully, whatever you do, you won’t be lulled into complacency. The work ahead is hard, but as James Baldwin wrote: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Selfish is easy.
Short term is easy.
Complacent is easy.
Turning our head and ignoring the problem is easy.
Going along to get along is easy.
But easy isn’t the point.
Better is.
Challenging the status quo is difficult, and worth it.
— Seth Godin
I’m counting on you – each of you — to use some of the insights you glean in this week’s issue of the Clairity Click-it to be better, do better, and help others do the same. I hope, as you dig through this hand-curated content from across the web, it will make your job easier, and more fulfilling.
I pick every resource thoughtfully (no AI used here) specifically to bring you the big ideas and useful tools you need to make our world a better place. It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.
As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the eclectic resources I believe will best meet the needs of the diverse range of folks who comprise the critically important social benefit sector.
You’ve got this!
Thank you for doing your vital work, with gratitude,
Claire
P.S. Even if you don’t care about all the Clairification School benefits, and are happy just being on the Clairity Click-it newsletter list, if you enjoy reading it and want to send a little love my way by enrolling, I would be most appreciative.
Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…
SPECIAL FEATURE: What Nonprofits Need to Know and Do Now
With hostilities, political upheaval, climate change, pandemics and even a meteor bulleting toward the earth, the regular shaking of the world can make us feel numbed and powerless. But positive change is possible. It begins with the realization the world can be changed, one act at a time. What better place to start than with the social benefit sector? If you’re looking to make an impact, here are some ideas to get you started.
ARTICLES
Click-it: Two Heads. No Heart. Roger Craver, the Agitator-DonorVoice, issues a wake-up call to the social benefit sector. Now’s the time to act. It’s about trust. This is about what institutions we—the organizations and our donors– let them destroy next. This is not the time for nonprofits to sit on the sidelines. What will you do to restore trust, not just in your organization but in the sector as a whole?
NOTE: Here are some recent articles I’ve written on the importance of both trust and empathy:
Click-it: Federal Funding Freeze 2025: What Nonprofits Need to Know and Do Now. This is a constantly updating piece with suggestions, links and updates on the situation with the funding freeze and other cutbacks. It’s from the team at Capital Campaign Pro. NOTE: They’ve also been hosting a weekly live session on the topic every Monday in February at 1:00 p.m. EST. There is one left.
Click-it: Better staff meetings now, please! Iin times of transition and change – and chaos like the first weeks of 2025 – staff meetings are the most important ritual for a team. So concludes a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review. The team at Third Space Studio agrees! Here, they exhort you to use staff meetings as a venue for collective care. They include a helpful list of check-in questions from Leadership Learning you might want to try. It could be good to use these with donors and volunteers as well. Food for thought.
AUDIO/VISUAL
Click-it: Boost your Nonprofit’s Cybersecurity: 10 Expert Tips for Safeguarding Your Organization [Register for free webinar, 2-26-2025]. Nonprofits everywhere, including their boards, are asking what they should do in the current environment to protect sensitive data. To meet the moment, the folks at Firespring have put together this live session to help you build your cybersecurity plan. You’ll get 10 actionable tips, saving you tons of research time. You won’t find a session like this just anywhere – let alone for free. Seize the day!
ARTICLES
Annual (Year-Round) Fundraising
Click-it: Integrating Peer-to-Peer Fundraising with Annual Campaigns. Mary Cahalane, Hands-On Fundraising, explores five strategies your nonprofit can use to integrate peer-to-peer fundraising into your annual campaign to support short- and long-term fundraising growth. If you want to expand your reach to new supporters, deepen engagement with existing supporters, and enhance brand recognition, these are strategies to seriously consider.
Donor Retention and Loyalty
Click-it: How to Write a Meaningful Donor Thank-You Letter. Folks, there’s a right and wrong way to do this. Alas, the lion’s share of thank you’s I receive are simply not okay. You may think yours is good, but does it incorporate everything it should? Check out this article on the Qgiv blog.
Click-it:. 7 Ways to Engage Your Donors Without Asking for Money. When donors feel valued, they’ll stick around. CauseVox has some ideas to help you show donors how important they are to you. It’s not just about the money!
Click-it: Organizing Donor Focus Groups: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits. Amazingly, when you ask donors for their feedback they not only provide useful information for future cultivation; they also feel more bonded to you. Here’s a great “how to” from Jay Love on the CFRE Central blog. May all your donor focus groups be productive ones!
Events
Click-it: How To Price Tickets for an Event [Includes a calculator!]. Want to know all the things to consider in setting your ticket price? This useful article from Eventgroove eliminates the guesswork and offers an interactive calculator so you can target your profit, input your costs and figure out how many tickets you must sell to meet your revenue goals.
Click-it: Successfully Promoting Your Event with Email. Want to know how you can leverage email to maximize ticket sales for your next event? Look no further than this Auctria article by fundraising communications specialist Vanessa Lockshin. You’ll find a step-by-step blueprint to drive action.
Major and Legacy Gifts
Click-it: Beyond Identification: 3 Tips for Qualifying Donor Prospects. Sarah Tedesco offers advice on the GreaterGiving blog for continually qualifying donors over time. Qualification is not a one and done thing.
Online, Digital Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: 7 ways to leverage social media for digital fundraising. With the right strategy, social media can be your secret weapon for rallying supporters and spreading your organization’s message. It allows you to reach a broad audience, engage directly with supporters, and encourage donations in real time. Here are seven tips from Storyraise for using social media effectively.
Click-it: Clean Your Text Message Lists for a Sparkly Shine. If you send messages to folks using their phone numbers, this may be something you haven’t considered – but perhaps should. The texting experts at Rally Corp have your back.
Click-it: How using buttons instead of hyperlinked copy increased click-through rates [Case study]. NextAfter runs hundreds of experiments (A/B tests) and generously shares the results. Here’s one where using a logo and CTA button, instead of hyperlinked text, drove a 133% higher click-through rate. Something you might want to try in your next email?
Psychology of Giving
Click-it: When Best Practices Go Boom: A Behavioral Scientist’s Guide to Fundraising Folly. This is a brilliant piece from the Agitator-DonorVoice. It’s a reminder of the importance of enabling donor autonomy. Helping them to help us is so much better than haranguing and ordering them around. Ah, psychology. Gotta love it.
Storytelling
Click-it:. Transform your interview process into storytelling magic. Stories trigger hormones, especially oxytocin, that can make us feel closer to other people. That’s what makes stories such a powerful tool for connecting with donors. Here Mary Cahalane, Hands-On Fundraising, suggests where to look for great stories, and how to conduct an ethical, empathic interview that elicits the magical story nuggets.
Strategy and Management
Click-it: 4 Nonprofit Growth Hurdles and How to Surmount Them. This article from Soapbox Engage discusses common challenges that harm nonprofits and offers strategies to persevere through them to the finish line. If you have problems with staff recruitment, volunteer burnout, managing growth periods or developing corporate partnerships, you’ll want to give this a read.
Technology as Tool
Click-it: Why you think that terrible AI-written fundraising appeal is great. Here’s a cautionary tale about AI writing from Jeff Brooks. It may look good to you at first blush. That’s not good enough. It has to grab the attention of your readers. Professional fundraising writers like Jeff, Future Fundraising Now, understand this. AI bots do not.
YOU
Click-it: Three Ways To Motivate Yourself Again (And Restart What You Want To Do). I read Sean D’Souza, Psychotactics, because he offers a ton of useful marketing tactics, mostly influenced by psychology. Really interesting stuff! This piece is just for you – if you ever have difficulty motivating yourself to get off the procrastination treadmill, stop with the excuses, dust yourself off and start all over again.
Other Learning Opportunities
ONLINE CONFERENCE, WEBINAR SERIES OR COURSE
Click-it: Monthly Giving Summit [Register for free 2-day online event, 2-26 – 27, 2025].Organized by Dana Snyder, author of The Monthly Giving Mastermind, and featuring expert speakers, this transformative virtual experience brings together nonprofit leaders and changemakers from around the world to help you create “subscriptions for good.” You’ll get actionable insights, useful peer-led case studies, meaningful peer connections and more. You know that monthly giving more than doubles donor retention rates, right? Do this!
Also check out this guide put together by Dana to help you with your monthly donor program implementation: Best Nonprofit Tech Stack for Monthly Giving | Top Donation & CRM Tools.
Click-it: Nonprofit Marketing Summit: Evolve [Register for free online conference, 3-4 to 3-6, 2025]. 80+ expert-led sessions plus 50+ CFRE credits. Plus, a community of like-minded nonprofit professionals! This is an opportunity you won’t want to miss.
WEBINARS, PODCASTS, CONFERENCES & ON-DEMAND AUDIO RESOURCES
If you can’t attend live, or are interested in sessions happening at overlapping times, note many are available via recording – but ONLY if you REGISTER!
Annual (Year-Round) Fundraising
Click-it: How to Raise: Be Prepared for Millennial Donors [Register for free webinar, 2-27-2025]. Join Donor Search and your peers for this special session designed to get you ready for a huge upcoming generational transfer of wealth. Learn from candid interviews with high-net-worth millennial major donors. The session will cover generational shifts in communication, engagement, and expectations, as well as real world stories of successful and failed philanthropic relationships.
Strategy, Management and Leadership
Click-it: Building a Resilient Fundraising Program: Strategies for Navigating Uncertainty [Register for free webinar, 2-27-2025]. This year’s unpredictability may make it challenging to obtain grants and government funding. But, don’t let uncertainty derail your fundraising efforts. Join ME and Griff Bohm, co-founder of donor engagement platform, Momentum, for a timely webinar on building a resilient fundraising strategy.
DOWNLOADABLE GUIDES, PAPERS, TEMPLATES & OTHER RESOURCES
Annual (Year-Round) Fundraising
Click-it: How To Cultivate Deep Donor Relationships at Scale [Download free guide]. The folks at Virtuous prepared this special step-by-step donor journey guide just for you. Not just how, but why.
Donor Retention
Click-it: Retaining Your P2Peeps [Download free e-book]. Retention is the name of the sustainable fundraising game, and that’s especially true for those folks who’ve stepped up to the plate to recruit members of their personal networks to join your cause. Here Bloomerang offers a panoply of tips for keeping these special advocates close.
Major, Capital and Legacy Giving
Click-it: Free Donor Assessment [No obligation – for real]. Veritus Group is offering a free donor file assessment. There is no obligation to work with them; they’re good people who truly want to equip you with the information you need to better engage your donors and transform your approach to fundraising. If you just count total dollars raised, and not dollars lost, you’re missing out on lots of potential. Do you know much donor value are you losing year over year? Fill out their form, they’ll run a report, and… you’ll get the answers! This is a true gift you can’t afford not to accept.
NOTE: If you want to become a master of major gift fundraising – a highly valued skill – this might be a great time to consider exploring certification. I highly recommend this fully revamped Veritus Group course: Certification Course for Major Gift Fundraisers. If you’re the executive or manager, there’s a companion course for you! The next cohort begins June 9th, and you’ll save $200 if you register before May 9th. After completion you’ll become a member of the prestigious Veritus Scholars. If you have any questions, just reply to this email and I’ll be happy to discuss whether this course may be right for you. I promise to be honest.
Did You Miss My Newest Articles?
Here are links to the most recent articles on the Clairification blog. Remember, your goal is not simply to squeeze money out of people. It’s to give donors a squeeze and a hug for being caring and generous. This will make them feel good, which will move them to continue sticking with you.
People Want to Know if They Can Trust Your Nonprofit and You
4 Nonprofit Strategies to Build Donor Trust & Lasting Relationships
Are You Breathing Your Calling?
How to Fuel a Donor Journey that Yields Major Gifts
10 Common Nonprofit Major Gift Asking Mistakes to Avoid
Major Donor Conversations: Promise Contrary to Pitch
Finally… if you have a question, any question…
Check out my free fundraising advice column on the Bloomerang blog! Ask your question here. And bookmark the Ask an Expert page for any time you have a question! Here’s one: Should Fundraiser Salaries Correlate With How Much Revenue They’ll Generate?
REMINDER for Clairification School students: Don’t forget to log in to your “My Clairification/Subscriber Dashboard/Monthly Tips” to grab your exclusive, timely tips for each month. MARCH and APRIL TIPS are live. Your support is much appreciated, and helps me to support you. Thank you!
And now, some little fairy houses and angels discovered in the urban forest. I love “shopping” in nature!
Look to your better angels to watch over us all. Go forth and fill the world with love, joy, peace, harmony and understanding. It’s needed now more than ever. And please support my extraordinary sponsors (see below). The Clairity Click-it content is free, and Clairification School is affordable, because of their generosity.
