Life Lived Well Clairity Click-it: Useful Nonprofit Links + Resources

I often remind myself of the words of Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

You who work in the trenches of the social benefit sector are those thoughtful, committed citizens. Never forget: your work changes the world. While it may be a slog sometimes – especially now as we face a surging pandemic, economic uncertainty, and a deeply divided society – you make a positive difference. Rest assured the part you play is a life lived well.

“I can face the winter with calm. I’d been thinking of the winter as a horrid, wet, dreary time. Now I can see other things-crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires. Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well.”

–A.A.Milne

To help you do your important work I’ve again collected fundraising, marketing and nonprofit management resources – all free – for you to use to inform your practice. Once again, I want to thank my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible to offer you this complimentary biweekly newsletter.

Let me close with the words of another poet:

you are not everything
but everything
could not be
everything without
you.

— Joseph Pintauro, poet, ‘To Believe in Things’

With gratitude,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please stay safe this holiday season. I am virtually hugging you right now! I hope you can feel the warmth.

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

SPECIAL CATEGORY: Tips for Not-So-Normal Times

ARTICLES

Annual Fundraising

Click-it: 8 Holiday Fundraising Ideas for Socially Distanced Times. Check out these ideas – some for you and some to share with donors! – on the Bloomerang blog.

Click-it: How to Let Your Donors Know about Expiring Tax Benefits. Because of the CARES Act there are tax benefits to giving in 2020 that apply to this year alone. If you let your donors know, they may just be able to give you a larger gift than they were anticipating. The experts at Stelter explain the details here.

Click-it: 4 Supporters You Should Ask To Conduct Peer-to-Peer Fundraising During a Crisis. IMHO, you should be doing more P2P fundraising. Especially right now, when people want to help but may be uncertain who they can trust. Enter… influencers! Unsure who to ask to help? Learn from Steven Shattuck in this guest post for the Get Fully Funded blog.

Events; Virtual

Click-it: Resistance to Virtual Events Gone after Record-Breaking “Ask” Breakfast. If you’re looking for ways to make your virtual events achieve your goals, look no further than this article from the Front Range Source blog.

Online Fundraising and Marketing

Click-it: 5 Email Marketing Lessons Learned During the COVID-19 Pandemic. This article by Robert Carnes on the Classy blog actually works for all times, but is especially pertinent right now when in-person fundraising is more limited and email must take over.

Strategy and Management

Click-it:  When Nothing is Sure, Everything is Possible [Register for free webinar, 12-17-2020]. Join Turnkey as they host the Children’s National Hospital Foundation to outline their extraordinary success last year, despite the pandemic, and how it was achieved.

WEBINARS & ON-DEMAND AUDIO RESOURCES

Trends

Click-it:  How 2020 Changed Fundraising and the Future of Philanthropy [Register for free webinar, 12-15-2020]. Join the leadership team of the ORR Group for a dynamic virtual conversation recapping 2020 fundraising trends and predictions for 2021. They’ll also explore topics top of mind, including how to build and enhance workplace culture in a virtual environment, how to continue motivating staff and avoid burnout, and ideas for engaging and retaining donors acquired during crisis.

DOWNLOADABLE GUIDES

Online Fundraising and Marketing

Click-it: Taking Great Selfie Videos and Photos [Download free e-Guide]. If you feel you don’t quite know how to do this right, check out this great resource from the folks at M+R. It’s a perfect tool to build relationships during these socially-distanced times.

Strategy and Management

Click-it: Managing Teams — Remote and Collocated — During a Pandemic [Read article; Download free management template]. From Marc Pitman, Concord Leadership Group, a formula for creating an environment where people feel cared about, not used. Grab this simple dashboard tool and see if it helps. What do you have to lose?

Click-it: Unmuted: What works, what doesn’t, and how we can all do better when working together online [Download free research report]. One simple question, “Should I turn my camera on or off?,”  can make or break your online session. Learn what the folks at Free-Range Thinking uncovered to assure you provide the best possible experience for your constituents moving forward.

Click-it: Most Donors Plan to Give More This Year-End [Read article; Download free 2020 Report]. NonprofitPRO reports new survey findings from The Nonprofit Alliance and RKD Group indicate 80% of donors plan to give the same or more this December as last December; just 20% plan to reduce their giving. And 61% of donors who plan to give more in December have already given more in 2020 than in 2019. So, whatever you do, don’t use the events of this year as an excuse not to ask. People want to give!

Other Articles: The Beat Goes On

Annual Fundraising

Click-it: How to fail at fundraising innovation — and how to succeed. Jeff Brooks, Future Fundraising Now, explains some tried-and-true realities – despite what your boss, board or marketing staff may believe. This may be especially useful to you if you keep being tasked to “find new, younger donors.”

Donor Retention

Click-it: 5 Ways to Retain Your #GivingTuesday Donors. Hopefully you sent a thank you. But you must do more if you truly want to fold these donors into your family on an ongoing basis. This FlipCause article suggests a number of ways to follow-up (they work for donors who give any time).

Click-it: Donor Relations: 4 Tips to Get on Your Donors’ Nice List. Have you been a bit naughty when it comes to donor cultivation and stewardship this year? You still have time to turn this around before the end of the calendar year. Here’s some solid advice from the folks at Qgiv. You’ve got this!

Click-it: Does Your Donor Service Deliver “WOW!”? The Agitator editors suggest you consider the difference between donor service as a cost center vs. a profit center. You’ve worked hard to acquire donors during the unprecedented times in which we’ve been living. Want to keep them? There’s no better time to think through this than the post-Covid transition period we’re entering.

Major Gifts

Click-it: What Do You Say to a Donor? This is an awesome article from the Veritus Group – so useful when you’re stuck for what to say when you get on a call with a prospective or current donor.  I think #3 and #4 are essential, and I love #2 to establish trust. And… you can even download a list of open-ended questions to post by your phone!

Online Fundraising and Marketing

Click-it: Where Would Sustainers Be Without Email? Learn from monthly giving expert, Erica Waasdorp, why you should be sending more email to encourage recurring gifts. All on the Nonprofit Pro blog.

Strategy and Management

Click-it: The Three Practical Empathies. Steven Screen of the Better Fundraising Co. gives his take on a philanthropic culture that works for both external and internal constituents.

Click-it: How Do You Incentivise Clients To Finish A Course? Sean D’Sousa of Psychotactics knows how to get people to do what he wants them to do. More important, he knows how to get them to do what they want to do. Sounds a bit like fundraising, no? This article will appeal to you if you’re a consultant doing trainings and courses. But it also applies to facilitating groups, making teams and meetings work, and assuring you incorporate fun elements into whatever you do.  You can also listen to it: iTunes | Android | Spotify.

Website

Click-it: How to Captivate and Engage Constituents with Your Website [Register for free webinar, 12-8-2020]. Too often fundraisers leave the website entirely up to marketing and technology staff. That’s a mistake. These folks need your input in you want to assure the website is doing its job creating awareness, provoking interest, encouraging engagement, and inviting (user-friendly) investment. At Firespring they’re experts on nonprofit websites and what works/doesn’t work. I promise you’ll learn a lot. Ask your website folks to join too!

Year End Giving

Click-it: Fundraising Magic Tricks to Boost Year-End Response. See how to make your year-end email appeals more magical in this article I wrote for the Bloomerang blog. I look at: first impression; subject line; body copy and magic words.

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 & ASSESSMENTS

Database Assessment: Major Gifts

Click-it: Donor Value [Request a free database assessment]. Do you have a problem with donor attrition? If you’re only counting total dollars raised, and (1) ignoring dollars and donors lost from folks who don’t renew or  (2) give less than the previous year, or (3) who could give more but weren’t really targeted for an upgraded ask, you’re likely leaving money on the table. Want to find out what’s going undetected in your database? The folks at Veritus Group provide a free, no-obligation analysis that uncovers patterns that often go unnoticed. You’ve nothing to lose, and plenty to gain! Check it out – and get your new year off to a great start.

Donor Retention

Click-it: Donor-Centric Fundraising [Download free e-Guide]. The folks at Merkle are experts when it comes to customer journeys, for profit and nonprofit alike.  Download this whitepaper  to learn the new way forward – a way that centers on the individual donor’s motivations and reasons for giving and crafts a personalized, truly relevant experience around it.

Year-End Giving

Click-it: Prepare for Success: Planning Your Year End Giving Campaign Today! [Download free e-Book]. The folks at NeonOne think you can design and launch a first-rate year-end giving campaign in three weeks – so you still have time! They’ve broken down what needs to get done, and when.

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!

• Use Behavioral Science to Positively Frame Year-End Philanthropy
• #GivingTuesday in Reverse: Do’s and Don’ts
• Happy Days of Thanks(for)Giving
• 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

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!

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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. December’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.