Magnolia Web Strategy

Nancy Schwartz over at Getting Attention just posted a great article about the importance of fundraising and marketing working together.

It starts with four strategies:

Put these four strategies to work to strengthen the marketing-fundraising collaboration in your organization:

1. Start at the top. It’s the only hope for a strong marketing-fundraising partnership
2. Articulate shared priorities to serve as the core of a common agenda
3. Identify what’s working—from each “side”—and do more of it
4. Build on real, compelling success stories, well-honed and widely shared and discussed as the glue of your fundraising and marketing conversations

Repeat after me. “I will no longer send out fundraising appeals with boring subject lines and long-winded pitches.”

In today’s battle of the inboxes, tweets, Facebook updates, text messages, and banner ads flying across the screen, organizations can’t afford to ignore online fundraising 101 strategies to motivate and inspire supporters to donate money. Don’t have the budget to hire fundraising strategists to help you craft your online fundraising campaigns? No problem. Follow these five tips and you will be on your way to increasing open and click-through rates and more importantly – raising more money for your nonprofit.

Step One: Short, Catchy Subject Lines

Read the full post at the FrogLoop Blog

If you’re in LA, and are interested in wading into the world of online fundraising, I’m facilitating a NetSquared Meetup this coming Wednesday:

Getting Started With Online Fundraising

It’s more than just a “donate” button

Host: Eastside Los Angeles Netsquared Group
Date: Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Time: 18:30 – 21:00
Location: Asian Pacific American Legal Center
Street: 1145 Wilshire Blvd
Town/City: Los Angeles, CA

Visit the MeetUp page for more info.

Fundraising Success magazine just published a good article about segmentation. It’s not one of the more glamorous pieces of fundraising, but it can make a big difference in your ROI. Enjoy.

For nonprofits involved in fundraising, segmentation is nothing new. But in the current economic climate, every activity requires review and analysis. Reviewing your segmentation strategy provides opportunity to not only increase ROI now, but to position your organization to prosper when the economy turns around.

Demographics and transactions
Data segmentation traditionally is divided between two broad categories: demographics and transactions. Demographics typically combine standard data elements such as age, gender, geographic location and job function with data elements specific to your organization. Together these elements create a donor profile that tells you who your donor is, and likely governs the tone and content of your messaging to that donor.

A few days ago I sat in on this Care2 webinar “While They’re Hot!.” If you missed it, the good folks at the Frogloop Blog have posted the take-aways, along with a full audio clip of the webinar.

If you work in non-profit fundraising, do yourself a favor and check it out:

Care2’s latest monthly webinar on October 1st was called “While They’re Hot! Converting Fresh Leads Into Donors” and featured Heidi Hess of Children’s Defense Fund and Greg Zelder of the California State Parks Foundation, with Holly Ross of the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN) moderating. Heidi and Greg presented case studies and discussed effective online engagement of potential donors at that very critical moment – right after they have signed up for a nonprofit’s email list.

Full blog post right here.

Do you know where your end-of-year campaign is?

As the air gets a little bit cooler and the days get shorter, it’s time to start hunkering down to plan your end-of-year giving campaign. Even in cooler economic times, end-of-year campaigns are still when the bulk of individual donations are received, so it’s always worth it to make sure you’re giving it all you’ve got and engaging your supporters like never before.

Not sure where to start? Here are some great resources:

Downloads:

A great e-book from Network for Good:
25 STEPS TO FALL & HOLIDAY FUNDRAISING SUCCESS

and last year’s great
Online Fundraising Survival Guide: 12 Winning Strategies to Survive & Thrive in a Down Economy

Links

Fundraising in a downturned economy

Fundraising when money is tight (audio transcript of interview with Mal Warwick)

Is integrated fundraising for real?

Ten things to avoid in email campaigns.

Ten best practices to increase online response rates. (you need to get a free membership for this article, but it’s worth it)

Slideshow:

If you’re new to the world of online fundraising, here’s a link to a training I recently did for Right To The City member organizations called Getting Started With Online Fundraising.

Webinars:

While They’re Hot! Converting Leads into Donors. (this one is October 1st and it’s free)

Case Foundation’s ‘Gear Up For Giving’ Social Media Tutorials (a series of several tutorials over a one-month span, also free)

I highly recommend the webinars. If you can’t make (or missed) the Oct. 1st webinar, be sure to check out the Case Foundation’s series. They’re all presented by highly skilled experts and you really can’t go wrong with that price.

All that great reading got your idea mill rolling? Looking to put a little extra ooomph into your end-of-year giving campaign and need a little help making it happen?

Contact us anytime to discuss how together we can make your 2009 holiday giving season your best one yet. That’s what we’re here for.