Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing:
Bread and Roses!
Bread and Roses!
– James Oppenheim
In Massachusetts, in 1912, a group of young women marched. They worked as operators of huge, mechanical looms in massive textile mills that covered the newly industrialized Northeast. Conditions were terribly unsafe. Tiny fibers filled the air, leaving them with never-ending coughs. Loom operators worked long hours, were paid a pittance, and many died from chronic lung conditions. The young women’s banner read: “Bread, yes, but roses too.”
The Lawrence mill workers’ strike became known in the annals of American labor history as the “Bread and Roses” strike. The poet, James Oppenheimer, wrote a famous protest song commemorating that action. It has been sung by everyone from Pete Seeger to Joan Baez to Ani DiFranco. The poem’s words declare the profound truth first articulated in the Book of Deuteronomy: “Human beings do not live by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3). It is not enough to ensure people have the bare minimum they need to survive, every human being also deserves those things that give life meaning, beauty, and joy.
Labor Day honors the heroes of one of the most successful movements for human dignity in history. Laws forbidding child labor, ensuring safe working conditions, requiring a minimum wage and overtime pay, and a host of other protections are the direct result of the courage and sacrifice of so many, including the women of Lawrence.
Labor Day is an expression of the positive values we see expressed every day in the social benefit sector. As you enjoy this long weekend, take a moment to pat yourself on the back for being a part of this good labor.
Here is some reading, curated from across the web. All the resources are free, and I hope you’ll find something to make your job easier, and more fulfilling. 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.
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 your vital work, and helping make our world a better place,
Claire
P.S. Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. It is my honor 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…
ARTICLES
Annual (Year-Round) Fundraising
Click-it: How to Make a Gift Chart to Reach Your Annual Giving Goals. Gift charts aren’t just for capital campaigns. They help you establish realistic goals and are a great way to get organized so you meet your annual fundraising objectives. Check out the tips in this NonProfitPro article by Erin Crotty.
Capital Campaigns
Click-it: The Hidden Power of Capital Campaigns: The Trojan Horse Effect. Andrea Kihlstedt, Capital Campaign Toolkit, discusses ways to use a capital campaign to strengthen other aspects of your management and fundraising.
Click-it: Are You Ready for a Capital Campaign? 5 Questions to Consider as You Plan for the Future. On the NonProfitPro blog, Elizabeth Abel walks through issues to consider prior to launching a campaign. It’s a useful roadmap.
Culture
Click-it: Best Strategies to Reframe The Fundraiser’s Role to Achieve Nonprofit Success. The average new fundraiser leaves their job in only 16 months. No one wants to feel like a pariah on a regular basis. But you can stop this by reframing the fundraiser’s role from moneygrubber to philanthropic guide. Check out my article on the Bloomerang blog to learn about how to distinguish the role of the donor, fundraiser and organization so they work in harmony.
Donor Retention
Click-it: 4 areas of focus for effective thank you emails. Rather than an email that reads like a form letter, take your donor thank you emails to the next level by concentrating on the four areas.suggested by Ronald Pruitt of 4aGoodCause.
Events
Click-it: Charity Sweepstakes or Raffles—Which is the Better Nonprofit Fundraiser? The experts at Eventgroove break down the pros and cons of the two options, coming down on the side of sweepstakes. If you’ve never considered this before, our post-pandemic digital world may mean the time is now.
Giving Tuesday
Click-it: 10 Giving Tuesday FAQs for Fundraising Success. Wondering what you can do now to position your nonprofit for maximum success? Check out this helpful post on Soapbox Engage. Learn things like when to begin planning, whether online giving is critical for success, how to incorporate peer to peer, monthly gifts, hashtags and more.
Major and Legacy Giving
Click-it: Are You Planning Monthly Touch Points for Your Caseload Donors? Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels of Veritus Group work extensively with major gift officers, and their experience is many struggle coming up with meaningful touch points to stay in close relationship to their prospects. Here’s what they recommend!
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: 5 Ways Canadian Charities Can Grow Their Digital Fundraising. Nathan Hill, NextAfter, shares 5 testable digital fundraising ideas to help Canadian charities – but really ALL charities – increase results. Lots of great tips here! I like the one about enabling EFT for monthly giving, rather than just credit card transactions.
Click-it: 5 Examples of Using Text Messaging in the Midst of a Crisis. If you don’t need this now, tuck this advice from the text messaging experts at Rally Corp away for when you do need to move fast. In a crisis, quick communication is essential. When you’re able to strike while the iron is hot, you’ll reap the reward – and help more people.
Social Media Management
Click-it: What is Social Media Management? And What Do Social Media Managers Do?. Neal Schaffer is a bona fide social media guru; when nonprofits were just entering the digital age, I was honored to write monthly posts for his platform about social media specifically for nonprofits. I stopped when I believed nonprofits had gotten the message. However, there’s still a wide gap between getting the message and acting on it. This is a terrifically thorough article about how to manage your social media activity; I dare you not to find something useful in it to boost your social media traction and lead conversion!
Click-it: 5 Tools to Fine-Tune Your Social Media Advertising Strategy. I always like to look at what the for-profit marketers are doing, and you should too. After all, they’re your direct competitors for supporter attention. Check out this article by Ann Smarty from Convince and Convert.
Strategy, Management and Planning
Click-it: Nonprofit Overhead: Managing Expenses for Your Organization. Everything you need to know about overhead, but were afraid to ask. To learn how concerned your nonprofit should be about this, and what you can do to better manage your overhead, read this article from Jon Osterburg of Jitasa on the MightyCause blog.
Click-it: Time to Grow? 4 Signs Your Fundraising Team Needs More Staff. You know you could raise more money, if only. Learn how to justify adding staff, and also how to find the right match, in this article from Aly Sterling on The Fundraising Report Card blog.
Website
Click-it: Nonprofit Website Design: 13 Best Practices for Killer Sites. Nonprofits of all sizes are expected to have professionally designed websites. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a web design professional to create an amazing site. Learn what to do in this article from Qgiv.
Other Learning Opportunities
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!
Annual (Year-Round) Giving
Click-it: Fundraising Refreshments: Monthly Giving Doesn’t Happen by Chance [Register for free 20-minute webinar, 9-15-2022]. What if you could receive consistent, dependable revenue every single month! You can! But first you have to build a strong sustainer program. The RKD Group hosts digital strategist Sloan Coffey for some tips to create an “always on” approach to sustainer conversion.
Board
Click-it: Get Your Board to Help You Fundraise—Even if They Don’t Wanna! [Register for free webinar, 9-5-2022]. Take advantage of this session from Firespring to assess your board’s fundraising personality; motivate board members to fundraise; set goals and kick off campaigns; create individual plans they’ll rock, and track without nagging.
Culture
Click-it: Moving Nonprofit Boards Towards Racial Equity [Listen to on-demand podcast], This episode of Julia Campbell’s Nonprofit Nation features a conversation with board experts Renee Rubin Ross, The Ross Collective, and Christal M. Cherry, The Board Pro. Want to learn more about DEI work? Want to learn how to initiate tough conversations? Listen in.
Digital Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: My Generosity Moment [Watch quick video with lightbulb idea]. This is what you should do for Valentine’s Day to make your donors feel loved and appreciated. Pick a segment of folks who make sense; go for it! You might even ask everyone on your staff to make these calls if you have enough donors you think merit the extra TLC. Get creative, and be generous. Thanks to Rachel Muir for sharing.
Grants
Click-it: Be a Standout! Ten Tips to Write Winning Grant Proposals [Register for free webinar, 9-7-2022]. Alice Ruhnke, president of GrantStation, will pull apart 10 concepts you can incorporate into your proposal development and writing strategies to make your grant applications get positive attention from funders. Sponsored by the good folks at TechSoup.
Major Gifts
Click-it: You’ve Made the Ask — Now What? [Listen to free, on-demand podcast]. People tend to prepare, prepare and prepare for the ask. Yet don’t think much about how to navigate the response. On Julia Campbell’s Nonprofit Nation podcast, Elizabeth Abel, CCS Fundraising, breaks down the five scenarios you can encounter after making an ask of a donor, and how to cultivate the relationship for the long-term.
Strategy, Management and Planning
Click-it: Fundraising Best Practices for Small Shop Nonprofits [Register for free 30-minute session, 9-6-2022]. Join TopNonproifts and NXUnite for a discussion around how to create a fundraising process attainable with limited resources; proven ways to raise money for small shops, and technology built to handle small nonprofit fundraising.
DOWNLOADABLE GUIDES, WHITE PAPERS & OTHER RESOURCES
Digital Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: Customizable Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Toolkit Template [Download for free]. The vast majority of successful P2P campaigns have one thing in common – they’ve leveraged a campaign toolkit. If you need something to provide participants with all the need-to-know information about your campaign, including helpful resources and tips to crush their fundraising goals, you don’t have to start from scratch. CauseVox has created this toolkit with tips to create engaging fundraising pages; plug-and-play communication templates; dedicated placeholders for you to insert your organization’s graphics, videos, hashtags, and social media links, plus a list of do’s and don’ts.
Strategy, Management and Planning
Click-it: Track Fundraising Results with this Proforma [Download free spreadsheet template]. From the generous folks at The Better Fundraising Co., this smart dashboard tracks everything about your appeals and newsletters, including drop date, number mailed, gross and net revenues, production costs, and more. It will give you a good sense of a typical annual mailing calendar for appeals and newsletters plus it.will help you improve, so you can raise more money.
Trends
Click-it: The State of Nonprofit Technology [Download free research report]. It’s a historic time as digital transformation is taking place across the social benefit sector. While nonprofit organizations already struggle with having enough resources to continue their day-to-day operations in a regular economic climate, the pandemic escalated the need for quick implementation of technology solutions for team collaboration, external communications, fundraising, and business operations overall.This insightful resource from NonProfit PRO, in conjunction with boodleAI, highlights how nonprofits are investing in technology, what value these technologies have on their organizations and which technologies will be trending upward in the future.
Did You Miss My Newest Articles?
- Donors Give to Big Visions. What’s Yours?
- Nonprofit Fundraising Truth: Stories are Persuasive, Data is Just Proof
- How to Project Manage Your Nonprofit Story
- Master Chef vs. Line Cook: How Do You Prepare Your Nonprofit Fundraising Plan?
- Why are You Cutting Down Trees and Asking Me to Pay For It? 5 Cardinal Sins for Fundraising Renewal Appeals (aka, making a poor 2nd impression)
- 5 More Top Strategies to Prepare for Fall Fundraising
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 a new one: How to Handle Donor Rejection.
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. SEPTEMBER tips are now live! If you’re not yet an enrolled student, you can get in on the fun here!
I really do wish every small nonprofit would read what you write. Thank-you for sharing with us all.
–BT Irwin, Small Nonprofit Coach
Claire Axelrad is Blogger, Consultant, Advisor and Guru. She has a pile of experience – having done it all and seen it all. Not only is her experience both broad and deep, her judgement is superb. She thinks precisely, writes clearly and focuses on substance instead of appearance. She is interested in addressing issues and serving nonprofit leaders – not in hyping issues and impressing those leaders.
– John Burke, Founder, VisABILITY
Claire is a superb professional, deep thinker and creative spirit in the service of philanthropy. I have worked with her in a variety of roles for nearly two decades, and have admired and supported her work. She is a person of utmost integrity, and a brilliant mind.
– Kay Grace, Principal, Transforming Philanthropy
My motto is: “If I know it, I want you to know it.” Don’t miss out.
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