Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
The ‘Clairity Click-it’ is a curated bimonthly newsletter – my gift to you – and I hope you enjoy the resources below as much as I enjoy finding them for you. There are plenty of useful articles, plus free webinars and downloadable guides – all hand-picked by yours truly.
I read. A lot. So I figure I may as well add some method and purpose to my madness. You are my purpose!
By the way, like the in-depth articles I write for my online, ongoing ‘Clairification School’, each resource I select falls into a key fundraising, marketing or nonprofit management area. If you’ve not yet paid your ‘tuition’ – just $100 — less than $2/week — for the full year – I hope you’ll consider it.
If you find value in Clairification, please sign up now for all the benefits ‘Clairification School’ has to offer. I’m as much of a ‘public school’ as I can be but, sadly, can’t keep doing this 100% for free
Your support means a lot,
Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…
Annual Individual Giving and Acquisition
Click-it: 7 Types of Donation Page Friction, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do About It. Awesomely useful article from Brady Josephson at Re: Charity. Well worth your time. Were I still working in the trenches, I would be sharing with my webmaster and/or marketing folks immediately!
Click-it: Millennials Aren’t Worth It. Zach Shefska of The Fundraising Report Card takes a data-based look at the issue of whether you should be putting significant effort into engaging Millennials. His conclusions may surprise you.
Content Marketing
Click-it: New LinkedIn Layout – A Very Different Desktop Experience. I often suggest to folks that they use LinkedIn to find prospects, create brand awareness, cultivate donors and recruit employees. This helpful article from Sue Ellson explains some of the changes LinkedIn is rolling out in 2017, and how that will affect your user experience.
Click-it: How to Create High Quality Videos for Social Media. The trend for sharing and virality is visual, so why not grab a few super practical tips (with examples!) to make your content really shine? Did you know a 2016 HubSpot survey found that 43% of consumers wanted to see more video content? Give folks what they want this year!
Donor Retention
Click-it: How Can I Get Involved With Your Nonprofit? I’m a firm believer that to retain and upgrade donors you need to create a range of engagement opportunities in which they can become more actively involved with you, beyond just making financial contributions. Cindi Phallen of Create Possibility offers up a list of 20 such options.
Leadership
Click-it: NEW research on fundraiser-donor relationships: What part of ‘broken’ don’t we understand? A thought-provoking piece on where fundraising sits within the bigger picture of creating lasting social change. From Paul Vanags, head of Oxfam, on the 101 Fundraising blog.
Management and Strategy
Click-it: Why Good Fundraisers are Hard to Keep – Part 1 and Part 2. If you missed my two-part article on Nonprofit Pro this month, I discuss the reasons fundraisers turn over so frequently – and what you can do about it.
Click-it: 7 Ways to Keep Your Nonprofit Development Team Intact. Amy Eisenstein offers some practical tips to save you time, money and heartache over the long run.
Click-it: One Simple Tip To Increase Your Productivity at Your Nonprofit Job. If your work is encroaching on your evenings and weekends, check out this simple piece of advice from Beth Kanter (includes links to other productivity tips).
Storytelling
Click-it: How to ethically use “alternative facts” in nonprofit storytelling. If you have trouble finding stories to tell because you worry about client confidentiality, read this article from Jeremy Koch of Empower Nonprofits.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
We all need balance in our lives in order to stay healthy and be effective in our jobs. In the spirit of balance, I am now offering an article that has nothing to do with nonprofit work per se – but everything to do with how you, as a human being in the 21st century, achieve equilibrium.
Click-it: The Neuroscience Of Music, Behavior, And Staying Sane In The Age Of Twitter. Neuroscientist and author of This Is Your Brain On Music Daniel Levitin talks about information overload on the Fast Company blog, and it’s very, very interesting. It makes a case for how music, art and discussion can impact your ability to function more effectively – and much more:
My reading of the research is that we really are, as a society working harder than before, but we’re not working as efficiently. We feel overloaded by the onslaught of information, and so I think that creates the conditions in which things like fake news and alternative truth can exist because we just throw up our hands and say, “I can’t deal. It’s somebody else’s job to deal with this, not mine.” –Daniel Levitin
FREE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Content Marketing
Click-it: Put these Content Marketing Strategies to Work for Your Nonprofit [Register for free webinar, 4-14-17]. Top Nonprofits offers a series of free and on-demand webinars. This one features John Haydon.
Corporate Sponsors
Click-it: Corporate Sponsors: How to Keep Them Giving Year After Year [Click to watch video]. Shannon Doolittle, event specialist, shares her tips on securing and keeping sponsors year after year on Movie Mondays.
Management and Strategy
Click-it: Managing Your Fundraising Team or Yourself [Register for free webinar, 4-5-17]. Mazarine Treyz of Wildwoman Fundraising is making this webinar available exclusively for you – members of the Clairification community. If you want to become a more effective manager, and make everyone with whom you work happier and less stressed (including yourself!), make sure to sign up. Even if you can’t attend live, be sure to register so you’ll (1) have access to the recording, and (2) get a discount code for the upcoming Fundraising Career Conference!
Online Social Fundraising
Click-it: 10 Emerging Trends in Online Communications and Fundraising [Register for free webinar, 4-11-17]. Learn what’s new and next in online communications and fundraising so that your nonprofit can prepare for the future and embrace being an early adopter. Offered by OnGood.
FREE DOWNLOADABLE RESOURCES
Becoming Data Driven
Click-it: Donor Retention Math Made Simple [Free download]. A whitepaper by Dr. Adrian Sargeant for Bloomerang, showing you how just a few percentage points increase in your retention rate can have a significant impact on donor lifetime value.
Click-it: The Individual Donor Benchmark Report [Download]. Find data on organizations with total revenues below $2 million, collected by Third Space Studio. There’s a lot of interesting data here, offering you an opportunity to benchmark your own results. Becoming a Data-Driven Organization: Q&A with Heather Yandow on Network for Good suggests how you might use some of this data.
Management and Strategy
Click-it: Fundraising Planning Guide, Calendar Template, & Goals Worksheet [Free download]. The folks at CauseVox have taken everything that goes into developing an actionable strategic plan and distilled it into this useful e-guide. If you’ve never created a plan, it’s a real gift. Even if you have, it’s a great review.
Click-it: Free Documents for Establishing Your Non-Profit [Free downloads]. Get templates for board member applications, bylaws and board member contracts from FormSwift.
YOU
Finally… Need career advice? My friend Mazarine Treyz is hosting her annual Fundraising Career Conference. Learn how to take your career in the direction you want it to go. Details and register here.
Featured Clairification Resource
You don’t just write killer fundraising appeals at the end of the calendar year! If you want your organization to thrive, you should be putting your compelling story in front of your donors all year long. Want to learn how to make an offer your donor can’t refuse? You may want to get my Anatomy of a Fundraising Appeal Letter. It’s filled with everything I’ve learned about what makes a successful appeal over the years, all tucked it into one handy no-nonsense guide. Plus it includes a template and resource guide. All Clairification products come with a 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.
