Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
The gratitude holidays – Thanksgiving and #GivingTuesday – 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.
With gratitude,
Claire
P.S. Seriously, you have to click on the ‘clap along’ link above. It’s impossible not to feel happy – something we could all use a bit more of right about now. Plus there’s some pretty dope dancing in this video as well. Keep smiling!
Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…
SPECIAL CATEGORY: Tips for Not-So-Normal Times
ARTICLES
Annual Fundraising
Click-it: How to Include Relevancy and Urgency in Your Fundraising Appeal. How will you assure your appeal speaks loud and clear to what is top of mind for folks today? I received an appeal last week so obviously suffering from last-year-appeal-syndrome that I burst out laughing! In this article for the Bloomerang blog, I describe some ways you can get a clue this year.
Click-it: 2 Fundraising Appeal Examples: Include Relevancy and Urgency. This article picks up where the previous one on Bloomerang ended, offering two real life examples and evaluating them on this two critically important criteria for 2020 year-end fundraising.
Events; Virtual
Click-it: Planning and Executing a Virtual Event: Post from the Front Lines. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Virtual events are still uncharted territory. Think before you plan. What will success look like? For you? For your attendees? Then walk through the necessary steps to get your there, as outline in this article by Leslie Allen, Front Range Source.
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: How COVID-19 Is Changing the Technology Needs of Nonprofits. Learn about the increasingly essential tools for digital fundraising, virtual events and more in this article on the TechSoup blog from Kaia Swift at Heller Consulting.
Click-it: Keeping Nonprofit Messaging Relevant with Dynamic Creative Optimization and Personalized Video. You may have never heard of DCO, yet it’s super relevant in today’s socially distanced world. Learn from the experts at Merkle how to adapt new tools to enable real-time personalization and testing.
Other Articles: The Beat Goes On
Annual Fundraising
Click-it: How to Create Sustainable Revenue with Recurring Giving. This super practical article from the experts at FlipCause will help you build a monthly giving program that increases your average gift size and donor retention rate.
Click-it: Where Are Your Monthly Donors Hiding?. Speaking of monthly giving, this terrific article on Nonprofit Pro from monthly giving guru Erica Waasdorp shows you exactly where to find your likely monthly supporters. These folks are what Erica calls “sleeping giants.” You may want to wake them up!
Click-it: The Top 4 Most Effective Fundraising Appeal Envelopes. If you haven’t order you outer envelopes yet for one or more of your mailed appeals, take heed of this article’s advice. It’s by Chad Barger on Nonprofit Hub. My favorite is probably #1 with the addition of a handwritten name over the return address. Also a huge fan of #2; in my experience, it doesn’t have to be your brand color. You can just buy off the shelf if time is of the essence. Good luck!
Click-it: You might not like what donors want. This is a reminder from Jeff Brooks to take the time to go beyond your assumptions about your donors, and learn why they’re really engaged with you. Otherwise your communications with them will miss the mark. While you’re at it, check out this companion piece from Jeff.
Major Gifts
Click-it: The Easiest Thing You Can Do Every Day to Raise More Money. Learn what you can do in just 15 minutes a day from major gift fundraising expert Amy Eisenstein. She includes some great sample scripts too!
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: Looking Outside the Application. How do foundations (and other donors for that matter) learn about you, and what might be their take-away? In this guest post for Foundant Technologies, Ephraim Gopin suggest opportunities you may be missing, and areas where you’re not putting your best foot forward.
Strategy and Management
Click-it: How the Craziest Ideas Can Boost Your Fundraising Efforts. Amy Eisenstein shares a great idea to keep your juices flowing and your work life fun and fresh. Check it out; try it out.
Click-it: Overcome Nonprofit Scarcity With Capacity Funding. Living with a scarcity mindset as you plan ahead for 2021? Why not try something more inspiring and fulfilling. This article by Nell Edgington, Social Velocity, suggests creating a culture of abundance. Why not try some of what she suggests?
Click-it: Write your annual fundraising plan with these 6 steps. Learn the difference between a real plan and mere good intentions in this practical piece from Sandy Rees, Get Fully Funded. Seriously, you need this.
Year End Giving
Click-it: The One Thing You Can Do to Boost Your Year End. If you do NOTHING else between now and December 31st, heed this advice from the experts at Veritus Group.
Click-it: 10 Year-End Giving Statistics Every Fundraiser Should Know. Here you’ll find useful data about year-end giving from NeonOne. Use it as a benchmark to inform your strategies in these last few weeks before December 31st.
Click-it: 10 Tips to Supercharge Your Year-End Online Giving. Here are excellent practical tips from Michael Stein on the Tech Soup blog.
Other Learning Opportunities
WEBINARS & ON-DEMAND AUDIO RESOURCES
If you can’t attend live, note that many are available via recording – but only if you register!
Major Gifts
Click-it: Finding the Hidden Problem in Your Major Gift Program [Register for free online webinar, 12-9-2020]. Most development directors and major gift fundraisers know how their overall major gift program is growing year over year. What they don’t realize, though, is how new donors moving into the program are MASKING the poor giving behavior of current donors.
Join Jeff Schreifels as he explains how he’s seen this problem in hundreds of donor data files analyzed by Veritus Group, and how you can discover where you stand.
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: Last-Minute Ways to Boost Online Gifts [Watch on-demand webinar]. Join Qgiv and Rachel Muir for these hot tips to maximize your year-end fundraising and donor retention.
Strategy and Management
Click-it: National Day of Conversation [Register to join discussion of fundraiser sexual harassment, 11-26-2020]]. #NDOC is a day of digital conversation to raise awareness of sexual harassment of nonprofit fundraisers. The full day of sessions is hosted by Fundraising Everywhere. You pay what you can; funds raised will be donated to projects working on prevention of sexual harassment in Canada.
Website
Click-it: An Inside Look at Firespring’s Nonprofit Websites [Register for free webinar, 11-24-2020]. Learn from the website experts at Firespring how to master your online presence and leverage the power of your nonprofit website. They’ll share client examples, demonstrating what separates a user-friendly website from one that fails to accomplish your fundraising and marketing objectives.
Year-End Giving
Click-it: Join The Year-End Fundraising Page Throwdown [Register for live webinar, 11-24-2020]. A few tweaks can make a huge difference to your bottom line, and the folks at CauseVox are here to help! Learn to create pages that capture your donor’s attention and provide a great donor experience. You can even submit your own page for a live review.
Click-it: Supercharge Your Year-End Fundraising [Register for free webinar, 12-2-2020]. You still have time to implement some important tweaks that could make a demonstrable difference in your results. Join the experts at NextAfter for this tactical, down-to-earth session that will enhance what you’ve already got planned.
DOWNLOADABLE GUIDES & SAMPLES
Donor Retention
Click-it: Last Minute Ways to Thank Your Donors this Thanksgiving [Download article + free images]. The good folks at Stelter offer up four ways to demonstrate your gratitude, increasing the likelihood donors will stick with you. No time to get creative? They’re giving away images you can use on social media, your website, or wherever you can think of.
Did You Miss My Recent Articles?
Here are links to the most recent articles on the Clairification blog. I think you’ll find these fairly practical. Hope so!
- 6 Strategies to Upgrade Nonprofit Donors Using Suggested Gifts
- Magic Wand to Wave to Keep Nonprofit Donors Close Virtually
- How to Help Donors Give Astutely Before Year-End
- Warning Sign: A Post-Trump Digital Divide Between Nonprofits?
- BOO! Are You Scaring Nonprofit Donors Away?
- 6 Strategies to Convey Your Most Emotional Fundraising Appeal Story
Please support my extraordinary sponsors (see below). The Clairity Click-it content is free, and Clairification School is affordable because of their generosity.
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. November’s tips are posted! If you’re not yet an enrolled student, you can get in on the fun here!
My motto is: “If I know it, I want you to know it.” Don’t miss out.
