Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
Three words that open the door for insight, understanding and improvement.
Gratitude isn’t in question. Neither is acceptance of the situation. It’s not unpatriotic or disloyal to talk about how something could be improved. Instead, when we care enough to say, “could be better,” we’re putting ourselves on the hook to create. You need to care enough to describe an improvement.
Because once you’ve announced how something can be better, you get the chance to show that it can be done.
— Seth Godin
Life’s no fun when you’re just phoning it in, or simply resting on your laurels. You need something to get creative juices flowing and spark joy. Do this for yourself, and you’ll inevitably do it for others too. Caring is sharing and spreading the love.
I publish the Clairity Click-it precisely to give you food for thought. Fuel, if you will, to ignite the creative process that will enable you to go from good to great.
To ask yourself, “how could we do this better?”
Grab your sand pail, and start digging through this issue’s resources! You’ll find curated content from across the web — all to make your job of facilitating philanthropy easier and richer.
As always, a big thank you to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the time hunting and gathering. Find a topic that interests you, and… click away!
It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place.
Thank you for doing such vital work, and giving to others on a regular basis,
Claire
P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars, and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!
Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…
SPECIAL FEATURE: SHOULD WE GO THERE?
So much is going on in the world; you may wonder how your nonprofit should respond. And if donors do give in response to urgency or rage, how do you sustain their giving? Here are a number of takes on the subject, including one from me.
Click-it: What’s Going On? What Can We Do? On Clairification, I discuss the role of the social benefit sector in pushing the world towards equity and balance. I also visit the qualities of empathy and mercy so important to building and sustaining relationships, groups and communities.
Click-it: Should You Issue a Public Statement? Ephraim Gopin, 1832 Communications, notes each organization is different and needs to know its audience, constituents, donors, supporters and staff. Then he offers how to make a determination about what and when to take a stand on public issues and controversies.
Click-it: From Rage to Community: Understanding Empathetic Donor Behavior. This is from Tim Sarrantonio, Connected Fundraising Weekly, on LinkedIn. He notes there can be a lot of niceties and pleasantries and not rocking the boat when it comes to conversations that need to occur in the charitable sector. Then he sits with “rage giving,” charting a path toward movement building through the prism of empathetic behaviors.
ARTICLES
Annual (Year-Round) Fundraising
There are so many strategies at your disposal to increase your fundraising revenues by leaps and bounds. Four good ones are shared in the articles below.
Click-it: 4 Ways to increase recurring donations with texting. You knew donors who give monthly, on average, give larger amounts and renew at higher rates than those who don’t, right? What if you could use a new tool to increase your number of monthly donors? You can! Rally Corp is an expert in the art of text messaging to cultivate and steward donor relationships. Read their recommendations here.
Click-it: 4 Types of Crowdfunding Campaigns and Why They Work. Crowdfunding enables you to reach out to broad numbers of potential supporters, and all these gifts add up! Here is an excellent guest post by Fundly on the NextAfter blog. You’ll learn: (1) 4 tips to improve any campaign; (2) 4 types of crowdfunding campaigns, and (3) how to choose the right type for your organization.
Click-it: Peer-To-Peer Fundraising and Your Nonprofit: Why It’s Amazing and How To Use It. Peer-to-Peer fundraising enables you to leverage the strength of current donor networks to amplify your outreach. It nurtures a sense of community, and the median amount raised by events in which attendees raise money on behalf of an organization through peer-to-peer fundraising pages typically is 4.5 times greater than ticketed events. Learn more in this blog post by Eventgroove.
Click-it: Matching Gift Process: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide. If every donor working for a business that matches gifts asked their employer to do so, you could increase your contribution revenue by leaps and bounds! Learn how to leverage this money in this article from the matching gift experts at Double the Donation.
Content Marketing/Writing
Click-it: How to tell your nonprofit story through quotes. Here’s a nice, meaty article from Vanessa Chase Lockshin, The Storytelling Nonprofit, for the Funraise blog. You’ll get ideas, and examples, of four types of quotes to spice up your communications and make them eminently more readable. Not to mention “sticky.”
Digital Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: How to Provide Donors with a First-Class Online Giving Experience. You have more control over whether someone does or does not donate online than you may realize. Here Jan McGuire, DRG Group, offers up some tips you’ll want to employ. Related: watch this brief video tip from Lynn Wester, Donor Guru.
Donor Retention
Click-it: Are you asking for a second gift?. Don’t wait a full year to ask again; you’re doing no one any favors. See the why and what for, including what you need to do to tee up the next ask, in this article from Ronald Pruitt, 4aGoodCause.
Events
Click-it: How to Structure Your Fundraising Event Committee. This is a terrifically practical article on the Greater Giving blog to help you organize your event team so you get the outcomes you want. Having subcommittees each focused on a particular goal is much more efficient than having the whole group consider (and reconsider) every decision.
Major Gifts
Click-it: 8 Strategies to Try When a Prospect Says “No Thanks”. I love this article on the Stelter blog. Partly, because it shares my “empathy formula” for overcoming objections (I first wrote about this on Clairification, then on the Bloomerang blog, and I’ve taught it to hundreds of fundraisers). I’m so glad to see it here, because precisely because it works so well (it works in your personal life too). Also, don’t forget to do the “pre-objection” work the experts at Stelter recommend!
Multichannel Marketing
Click-it: How to Build an Integrated Marketing Strategy. If someone receives a mailed appeal from you, then two days later receives an email from a different department, can they tell these communications come from the same organization? Do the calls to action support one another, or step on each other? Studies have shown integrated campaigns across more than four channels can outperform single or dual-channel campaigns by a staggering 300%. Learn how to build a stronger marketing strategy in this article by Lyndsey Hrabik on the Firespring blog.
Strategy and Management
Click-it: Crisis Of Confidence: Your Nonprofit’s Worst Fundraising Enemy. Worried about asking donors amidst creeping inflation, high gas prices and the threat of a coming recession? Don’t take your eye off the ball when it comes to offering opportunities to create meaningful change. Read my article on the Bloomerang blog to learn more.
Click-it: How to Save on Postage When Rates Increase in July. In case you weren’t aware this was happening, you can get all the detail in this post by Summer Gould on Nonprofit Pro. Plus you’ll find some tips to help you clean up your lists so no postage is wasted.
WEBINARS, PODCASTS, COURSES & 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!
Boards
Click-it: Growing a Board that Truly Cares about Inclusion and Equity [Download free, on-demand webinar]. Network for Good hosts Renee Rubin Ross and Christal Cherry, who share examples of challenges boards face, four questions you can use to persuade your board to invest meaningfully in diversity, equity and inclusion, and tools to move through these questions. Challenge yourself, and listen in!
Branding
Click-it: Stop f***ing about with your logo and stick to fundraising instead [Listen and watch, or read]. Mark Phillips, Bluefrog Fundraising, opened the Rogare Critical Fundraising with this lecture. It’s free to all on the SOFII blog, and well worth your time if you’re in the midst of a rebrand or contemplating one. Also useful if you’re dealing with fallout from a recent rebrand.
Content Marketing
Click-it: A Blueprint for Better Newsletters That Yield Better Fundraising Results [Register for free webinar, 7-13-2022]. Are you using your newsletters strategically, or have they simply become another deadline on your “to-do” list? This Douglas Shaw & Associates webinar will discuss key blueprint strategies to create strong content, write donor-focused copy, achieve compelling lay-outs, avoid common pitfalls and actually raise money.
Click-it: Tell Your Story: Reach Donors Using Your Free Candid Profile [Register for free, on-demand e-course] Are you putting your best foot forward to millions of potential donors on Candid/Guidestar? Learn how to do so in this one-hour session; it’s the best way to claim your nonprofit’s Candid profile, earn Seals of Transparency and establish your trustworthiness and authority.
Digital Fundraising and Social Marketing
Click-it: How to Create a Future-Proof Nonprofit Social Media Strategy [Register for free webinar, 7-21-2022]. Do you know the four pillars of social media management? The folks at Qgiv are hosting one of my favorite nonprofit social media experts, Julia Campbell, for this lively session to help you focus, prioritize, and get your social media marketing on track. Learn trends, what is just hype, and how to successfully navigate change.
Click-it: Data-Driven Fundraising Techniques To Increase Revenue [Register for free webinar, 7-14-2022]. If this is something you’ve been meaning to learn more about, here’s your opportunity to hear from experts at Fundraise Up, Windfall Data and Fundraising KIT. They’ll be discussing how to take advantage of AI, machine learning, and a variety of data-driven techniques to increase your revenue while saving time and resources.
Click-it: How to raise more money online without asking more often [Register for free webinar, 7-13-2022]. DonorVoice is going to share some surprising research about a magic bullet to increase online fundraising revenues. Join this session to learn about a charity that increased online conversion from 12% to 32% by asking for feedback on the checkout process and making a series of small, inexpensive fixes.
Grants
Click-it: The Ins and Out of Grant Writing for Nonprofits {Register for free webinar, 7-14-2022]. Join Top Nonprofits and NXUnite. for this session about writing grants that clearly communicate your organization’s mission, goals and project objectives. Learn to craft a killer statement of need, include credible evaluation methods, and much more!
Major and Legacy Gift Fundraising
Click-it: 10 writing tips for fundraising planned & major gifts in unprecedented times [Register for free webinar, 7-12-2022]. From a potential recession to the coming midterm elections, you may be wondering how to break through the noise and have your fundraising messages stand out. FreeWill is hosting this webinar to help you master techniques for powering writing, including tips and strategies to hook and engage your supporters in a competitive environment.
Strategy and Management
Click-it: Let’s talk about POWER [Listen to on-demand webinar]. This session with Mazarine Treyz and Sarah Olivieri, Pivot Ground, is insightful, entertaining and definitely thought provoking. It covers the role of staff and boards (confirming vs. deciding/approving), debunks “best practices,” looks at nonprofit power structures, and so much more. Ask this: Who suffers the consequences if this decision is made? Shouldn’t they be involved in making the decision?
DOWNLOADABLE GUIDES, WHITE PAPERS & OTHER RESOURCES
Culture of Philanthropy
Click-it: Building a Culture of Philanthropy [Download free white paper]. Learn what a nonprofit with this culture looks like and how to create this culture within your own nonprofit. From the folks at Veritus Group, who work with hundreds of nonprofits of all shapes and sizes. Everyone can do this.
Events
Click-it: The Future of Virtual Events: 2022 Research Highlights [Download free report]. Per research by Fundraising Everywhere, the biggest positive impact of live virtual events has been on reach, supporter engagement and retention. For this reason, 70% of charities will continue with live virtual events post-pandemic for both internal and external audiences. Thinking of ditching yours? Read this first.
Did You Miss My Newest Articles?
- S’WOT’s Up? The Future, That’s What: Your Crystal Ball for Business Success
- Important News about Relationship Fundraising: Stop Losing Donors
- What’s Going On? What Can We Do?
- Play to Your Strengths: Where Do You Add Most Value?
- Be Your Donor Week
- Proven 1-2-3 to Nonprofit Fundraising Success
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 you may find helpful: How Do You Calculate Your Nonprofit’s Average Dollar Retention Rate?
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. JULY tips are now live! If you’re not yet an enrolled student, you can get in on the fun here!
Please support my extraordinary sponsors (see below). The Clairity Click-it content is free, and Clairification School is affordable because of their generosity.
I’m subscribed to a million fundraising blogs and the one I consistently open and read most of, is yours. The content is always carefully curated and helpful, not just sales pitch after sales pitch for your own stuff. You stand out, in a good way.
—Juliane McLean, Development Coordinator, Bridgercare
You consistently remind me of the proven basic facts of fundraising!! Thank you! I consistently share them with our team and with the newbie fundraisers I am mentoring.
– Margie McCurry, Fund Builders Alliance
My motto is: “If I know it, I want you to know it.” Don’t miss out.
