Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
- Click it!
The Click-it is early this week since year-end is fast approaching, and I couldn’t wait to share these awesome tips to help you plan your year-end campaign! I’ve got a bit of everything here – from finding email addresses to build your online mailing list… to tips on getting appeals read… to making sure you’re not missing any tricks… to social sharing strategies… to best email subject lines… to Giving Tuesday — and more! I’ll no doubt have even more for you before the end of the year, but now is really the time to get started. Don’t delay. [If you really want to assure you don’t miss a trick, scroll down to the bottom and check out the webinar I’m offering with the Foundation Center on the 17th]
Email Addresses
Click-it: The Complete Guide to Finding Any Email Address: Tools, Tips, Tactics, And More comes from the folks at Yesware. If you need to find email addresses for folks on your mailing list, this offers 11 tips – including finding addresses using not just Google, but also Twitter and Linked in.
Year-End Giving
Click-It: 5 Rules to Get Year-End Appeals Read. Grantspace and the Foundation Center offered me the opportunity to guest post earlier this month, so I thought I’d share with you – my loyal subscribers. Do you have any other great rules to get appeals read? Please let me know in the comments below.
Click-it: 7 Ways You Can Make Your Year-End Fundraising Really Count. Here’s a second guest post from me on the Grantspace blog last week. I suggest seven questions you may wish to consider as you prepare to launch all the elements of what will make your annual campaign super successful this year. You should have a full bag of tricks at your disposal, not just one or two. Check this out to see if there’s anything you’re overlooking.
Click-it: 5 Tools That Will Get Your Community to Share Your News. Planning for year end is about more than just writing an appeal letter. You need to also plan to get as many folks as possible to see and read your appeal. One way is through social sharing. Here Susan Chavez offers practical tools you can grab to make it easy for folks to share your emails, blog posts, website content, infographics and social media.
Click-It: 101 Best Email Subject Lines. This should give you some ideas to kick-start thinking about great email subject lines for your year-end emails. They aren’t nonprofit-specific, but they’re all winners for sure. Thanks to the folks at Digital Marketer for sharing these.
Click-it: My Top 5 Tips for a Profitable Year-End Campaign. Gail Perry always offers great advice on her blog, and this post is no exception. The one she mentions that I find is too often overlooked is to prime your donors before you ask. She suggests you send them postcards or emails — or even call them — to let them know your year-end campaign is about to roll out. You want to get your donor emotionally involved now to set the stage for how they can help and what they’ll be able to accomplish.
Click-It: Tips for an Effective Fundraising Appeal comes from Kat Kuehl on the Cause Vox blog. I’ve included it because it includes some advice for incorporating crowdfunding into your comprehensive campaign. Are you doing this? Have you considered it? The key questions you must ask in crafting a crowdfunding campaign is… wait for it… how to stand out from the crowd! Get it? Crowdfunding is crowded! Here’s also a link to a post by Rob Wu on how to create a perfect call to action.
Giving Tuesday
Click-It 6 Reasons to Engage on #GivingTuesday. If you’re wondering whether to participate, check out this post by Yvonne Hudson and Third Sector Today. It’s coming right up on December 1st – so no time like the present to make your decision and build your strategy.
Click-It: Is Giving Tuesday a Waste of Time is a great compilation of advice from a variety of nonprofit and online experts as to whether or not this makes sense for your nonprofit. Thanks to Socialbrite for collecting and sharing all this great wisdom! Wonder what I think? Check out my suggestions for an alternative view of Giving Tuesday, and how you might use it just a bit differently, here.
FREE RESOURCES
Marketing
Click-it: 21+ Easy Ways To Build An Email List That Will Skyrocket By 552% In 1 Year. I love this post from Nathan Ellering on the Co-Schedule blog. It’s not specific to nonprofits, but if you can’t find at least a half dozen great tips here – you’re not trying! With year-end fast approaching, it’s time to build your email list.
Fundraising
Click-It: Monthly Giving Starter Kit. The folks at Donor Perfect have collaborated with monthly giving expert Erica Waasdrop to offer this free downloadable monthly giving kit. It’s one of the best ways to retain and upgrade more donors, so check it out. It may be an option to consider adding to your year-end campaign.
And speaking of not missing a trick with your year-end fundraising…
Your Year-End Fundraising Checklist
- Year-end fundraising is a terrible thing to waste. Join me and the Foundation Center to assure you don’t miss a trick!
Many nonprofits will raise 25% to 40% of their total annual campaign goal from mid-November to December 31st. To make sure you don’t miss opportunities that can make a big difference in your results, the Foundation Center and I are collaborating to offer you a useful webinar next Thursday. We’ll cover a lot of ground, view lots of examples and have ample time for Q & A. I urge you to join us! It’s this Thursday, September 17, 2015 11 – 12:30 PST; 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST. Get more details and register here.
Oops! I almost forgot…
- Learn from 3 different experts – and practice (or listen to your fellow students give it a try)!
Get Ready for Your Major Donor Asks Too!
I’m excited to be collaborating next month for three live webinars — a “Virtual Major Donor Master Class Series” plus one “Live Major Gift Practice Ask Clinic” with donor-centered fundraising and retention expert Jay Love and fundraising “wild woman” Mazarine Treyz. Get all the details here. I’m really thrilled about it! If you want to grab the early bird before it disappears September 22nd. Don’t forget. Hope to see you there!
Photo: Flickr, Isaac Torronterra
The Clairity Click-it is a weekly publication linking to insights inspired by the 7 Clairification Principles that help you “clairify” your values, stories, branding opportunities, social marketing channels, support constituencies, engagement objectives and resources. Check out my newly expanded 7 Clairification Keys to Unlock Your Nonprofit’s Fundraising Potential which builds on these principles. If it doesn’t reinvigorate the way you approach your work, I offer a full 30-day money- back guarantee — no questions asked. To your success!
2 Comments
Hi Claire,
Regarding your article about finding donor e-mail addresses, if they haven’t provided them to you, isn’t that called spam? I know that we don’t send e-newsletters to people unless they’ve given us permission to do so.
Just curious as to your thoughts on this. Thanks much for all of your helpful advice.
Yes, Catherine, it technically is spam and you have to be very careful. I don’t necessarily recommend doing this, but many organizations and businesses do so when they’re under the gun to build lists. Sometimes they don’t get in trouble, because they’ve done an effective job of only adding addresses of folks that really do want to hear from them. It’s tricky though. I would rather see organizations build their email list by encouraging folks to sign up for their blog or e-news by offering some incentive to do so (a free “How to” list; recommend reading; inspirational quotes; preferred registration or seating, etc.). Another tactic to expand your list is to put share buttons everywhere; then encourage supporters to forward your materials to their friends.