Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
The gratitude holidays – #GivingTuesday and Thanksgiving – are upon us! Are you ready?
Because I’m so grateful for the work you do in making our world a better one, I’ve collected a ton of great gifts for you this month! All to make your life a little easier. Articles, free webinars and free downloadable guides to help you succeed in this most generous of seasons.
Remember why you do this. Yes, it’s to further your mission. But remember donors are your mission too. They need you in order to become their best selves, and to find meaning that might otherwise elude them. Here’s the bottom line:
“Giving makes us happy. Check out the latest research from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. As donor relations and stewardship professionals, it’s our job to build on that happiness and create lifelong relationships between donors and our organizations. We do that through our thank you letters and calls, reports, videos, events…every experience that becomes part of a donor’s journey with our organizations. Clap along if you know what happiness is to you…“
— Eliza McNulty, President, Association of Donor Relations Professionals (ADRP):
Once again, I want to thank my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible to offer this biweekly newsletter to you for free.
To your success,
P.S. Speaking of Bloomerang, we’ve recently launched a new Ask an Expert (“Dear Charity Clairity”)feature on their website. Check out the current Q & A and … feel free to ask your own questions!
Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…
Acquisition
Click-it: Forbes Report: Existing Donors Prefer Email; Facebook Leads in Donor Acquisition. Struggling with donor acquisition? Qgiv partnered with Campaign Monitor to research how donors prefer to communicate and where they prefer to donate. You can also download the research findings or watch an on-demand webinar.
Annual Giving
Click-it: Make your donor an action hero. “Please send money” is not your most effective fundraising strategy. Learn how to inspire thoughtful, generous gifts in my article on the Candid (formerly Guidestar) blog.
Content Marketing
Click-it: 10 Best Tools to Create Interactive Content. Lilach Bullock is a content marketing whiz. Here she’s done the research for you, picking out the best interactive tools to engage your constituents so you can build lasting relationships with them. Things like videos, quizzes, contests, infographics and surveys. Many of these offer free trials.
Click-it: It’s Hard to Convey a Program’s Excellence Using Poor Photographs. Lousy photos do a lousy job of telling your story. Grab some simple tips from Graves Fowler Creative to make your pictures worth $1,000.
Donor Retention
Click-it: Getting donor feedback: Q&A. The best way to ensure donor loyalty is to show donors you know them. So… you need to enact some “getting to know you” strategies. Here are some good ones from Ronald Pruitt at 4aGoodCause.
Major and Legacy Gifts
Click-it: Stop Fundraising on Bended Knee. Nell Edgington of Social Velocity reminds us of the importance of coming from a place of feeling worthy when making an ask. If your organization is achieving results, you are a worthy investment. Own it.
Click-it: 5 Ways You Can Get Meetings with Major Donors (Even When They Won’t Answer their Phone). No more excuses! You can also watch this free, on-demand webinar on the topic if you want to dive deeper. All from the good folks at MarketSmart.
Click-it: Ten Ways to Get Rid of Your Major Donors. Do the opposite of all these things and you’ll be well on your way to a dynamite major gifts program – thanks to the Veritus Group.
Click-it: 10 Ways Promote Planned Giving during the Holidays. The Stelter Company provides a checklist of ideas to promote lucrative non-cash giving alternatives during this busiest giving time. This includes bequests, beneficiary designations, IRA gifts, donor advised fund gifts and gifts of appreciated stock.
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: 7 Expert Tips To Get Your First 100 Email Subscribers. Jeff Bullas is one of the world’s most talented social marketing experts, so from time-to-time I like to check out his blog; then borrow strategically. These are good tips for building your email list. I particularly like #2, #3 and #5 (which is really an admonition to up your newsletter game!) for nonprofits
Click-it: 5 Questions to Ask Before Sending That Email Blast. John Haydon has always been one of my ‘go to’ online fundraising gurus, and here he offers up a super simple template for making sure that email you’re about to send is going to do the job you need it to do.
Website
Click-it: How to design an engaging nonprofit home page. There’s nothing more important at the end of the year when it comes to attracting prospects and converting them to donors. See the practical tips Sarah Henry has to offer on the Candid blog.
Year-End
It’s all on the line this month. Succeed or fail. There’s still time for a few tweaks. Hopefully some of these practical, ‘how-to’ articles and guides I prepared for the Bloomerang blog will be helpful.
Click-it: 18-Point Annual Fundraising Appeal Checklist. Use these pointers for both snail mail and email appeals.
Click-it: 13 Year-End Nonprofit Fundraising To-Do’s. 13 is my lucky number. Make these tips lucky for you too!
Click-it: How to Get More People to Open Your Nonprofit Email. If people don’t open it, all your effort is wasted.
Click-it: Ultimate Guide to Last Minute Year-End Fundraising Strategies. Little things can make a big difference. If you think you don’t need to try at least one of these things, I think you don’t need to raise money. What other reason could there be for not using common sense?
Click-it: The Definitive Year-End Fundraising Checklists. Absolutely everything I could think of for you to check out before your end-of-calendar-year strategies are put to bed.
Click-it: Asking for Stock Gifts Boosts Nonprofit Contributions. If you’re not promoting these gifts, do so as a service to your donors. It helps them. It helps you..
FREE AUDIO-VISUAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
The more you learn, the more you grow.
Finding webinars you’d like to attend that overlap? Note that for many of these webinars you can obtain a copy of the recording if you’re unable to join live – as long as you register!
Grants
Click-it: Start Your 2020 Grant Strategy Off Right! [Register for free webinar, 12-3-2019]. Learn from Diane Leonard how to set goals, develop more competitive grant applications, and engage your colleagues to help you with data collection and reporting. Offered by CharityHowTo.
Online Social Marketing
Click-it: Social Success Summit 2.0 [Sign up for video series — available ’til 12-11-2019]. There will be 27+ speakers on a wide array of topics. You can tune in whenever and watch whichever sessions you want. This is the stuff social media agencies know about! It’s not nonprofit-specific, but it’s cutting edge and certainly applicable. After all, nonprofits compete with everyone else in the digital space. Want to learn about live video? Facebook ads? Instagram lead generation? It’s all there – and more. Presented by AgoraPulse with Neal Schaffer.
Website
Click-it: Convert Supporters with Powerful Landing Pages [Register for free webinar, 12-6-2019]. With great landing pages, folks are 10 times more likely to donate, sign up, register or engage with your nonprofit. In this session, Jay Wilkinson, Firespring CEO and Founder, shares real-world landing page examples that increase conversions and what they’ve learned from studying hundreds of nonprofits and their landing page designs
FREE DOWNLOADABLE MATERIALS
Boards
Click-it: Top 10 Strategies to Involve Nonprofit Boards in Year-End Fundraising [Download free Solution Kit]. So much needs to get done this time of year it should be easy to find more than one way to involve each board member. And there are numerous ways board members can help without making a single ask. I’ve packed a ton of experience-based fundraising wisdom into this e-guide for Bloomerang.
Click-it: Doing Well at Doing Good [Download free e-Guide to Good Board Membership]. For board members, this free guide from Boardable contains actionable advice on how to get and stay engaged, develop a voice in the decision-making process, and understand how one’s impact as a board member can effect change beyond your role. For staff, learn various forms of engagement for board members, both new and veteran.
Major Gifts
https://capitalcampaignmasters.com/create-case-for-support-with-engagement-tool/. Andrea Kihlstedt of Capital Campaign Masters discovered a way to not have to meet face-to-face with major donor prospects. She does it side-by-side! Learn how by reading about the ForImpact ‘Engagement Tool Template’ she uses; then join Andrea and Nick Ellers for a recording of a web-conversation, and finally you can download the template.
Monthly Giving
Click-it: Sustainer Programs Complacency Breeds Stagnation and Less Revenue [Download free e-Guide]. Hopefully you’ll be acquiring and renewing monthly donors with your year-end campaign. Want to know how to keep them? Amy Bobrick of Merkle RMG lays out how to approach sustainer retention actively, not passively.
Check out the new “Ask CharityClairity” feature on the Bloomerang Blog.
Click-it: Ask an Expert. See NEW questions pertaining to (1) how to get co-workers to be donor-centric; (2) best words for your donate button, and (3) good e-appeal subject lines.
PLUS… feel free to ask your own questions!!!!
Did You Miss My Recent Articles?
Here are links to the most recent articles on the Clairification blog:
- FAKE Nonprofit News: 6 Fundraising Untruths
- Hand-Me-Downs! E-Appeal Example
- 12 Quick Strategies to Boost Year-End Fundraising
- Fundraising Strategies for Online Appeals – The End is Near
- 3 Ways to Knock Your Donors’ Socks Off This December
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 November. 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.
