From Our Brains to Yours

July 9th, 2009

Focus, Focus, Focus

We all have limited resources.  Fundraising campaigns, advocacy campaigns, candidate and issue campaigns all constantly try to get the most out of their limited resources.  Whether those resources are financial, people, time or something else, there is rarely enough and using them wisely will be the true test of your success.
The best results come with [...]

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June 29th, 2009

Engaging Major Donors, Online?

When most of us think about our online donors, we think about small or mid-level donations.  The type of donor that is gradually transitioning from direct mail to email.  What we don’t usually think about is our major donors – the individuals who make very large contributions that help the organization build new programs or [...]

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June 15th, 2009

New Versus Old

We all know people who are either enamored with the new tool or enamored with the idea of doing something new and different.  They avoid doing the slower, older, more conventional approach that has demonstrated its success over time. They want to be seen as new and forward thinking, they want to make a splash.
But [...]

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June 8th, 2009

Why say it just once when you can say it twice, or thrice

OK – I just wanted to use the word thrice in the title.  But my question still remains – why say things just once when you can say them more than once?
When trying to activate donors, members, or activists to take action, asking only once leaves a lot of potential “actions” on the table. Most [...]

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June 1st, 2009

Social Media Fundraising – the Who, not What

With the huge growth in social media, individuals and organizations have increasingly looked to social networking sites as the next opportunity to find new sources for fundraising.  Many are disappointed when the Facebook (or other network) pages their organization sets up doesn’t yield stellar results, even when pushed very hard.  Sally Heaven over at Connections [...]

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May 26th, 2009

Four great posts from around the web

Welcome back from the holiday.  We got so caught up in work (and excitement for the long weekend) at the end of last week that we forgot to bring you Three Things on Thursday.  Our sincerest apologies and don’t worry, they’ll return this Thursday.
To kick off the unofficial summer season, I thought I would highlight [...]

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May 18th, 2009

A relationship with an excel file?

e.politics has posted a six part series on the lessons from the Obama campaign.  I highly recommend reading all six posts, but last week’s missive was particularly insightful: “Learning from Obama’s Financial Steamroller: How to Raise Money Online.”
The article includes a long list of basic principles, and a few really struck a chord:
“Email activism is [...]

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May 14th, 2009

Encourage users to share your content

It’s Thursday, so it must be time for three things.  This week, we have three tips for encouraging your users to share your content online.
At it’s core, Web 2.0 is just technology giving us more tools to share content and be social.  Where articles used to be clipped from newspapers or magazines and passed around [...]

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April 27th, 2009

Big picture checklist: web redesign

Designing or redesiging your web site is rarely easy.  There will be tons of little questions related to design details, what specific pages say or don’t say, etc., etc, etc.  But too often, people are ready to agonize over the size and color of logos and buttons before they’ve decided a few of the big [...]

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April 16th, 2009

Spring Cleaning Edition

If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things.  This week: Three spring cleaning shores for your online presence.
Every spring many folks try to clean out a room in the house, get their office organized and refresh for the summer. The same idea can certainly apply to your web site and email lists.  Ideally, many of [...]

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