From Our Brains to Yours

April 13th, 2009

Back to the basics – Fundraising Online is like Fundraising Offline

The Network for Good Learning Center is a great fundraising resource for any non-profit.   They have a great article up: “Five Things We’re Forgetting When We Take Our Fundraising Online.”  Rebecca Ruby Higman reminds us that the same basic principles apply to fundraising online as they do offline.  She uses these five principles:

People like to give [...]

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April 2nd, 2009

Worthy goals for using social networking

If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things. This week: Three worthy goals for using social networks to help your non-profits
On Monday, Shayna had a great post: “Tools are not strategies.” So true.  As Shayna said, “Neither websites nor Twitter, not Convio nor social networks, not even email will yield results for your organization if [...]

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March 26th, 2009

Remember when sharing your list

 If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things. This week: three things to consider when before sharing your list
Most organizations have been in a position where they have been approached by other groups about sharing their list or list-swapping.  It can be a way that your organization can make some extra revenue (by renting) or build [...]

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March 23rd, 2009

Interact first, ask second.

As always, Seth Godin simplies something most would think is obvious with his post, The pandhandler’s secret.
First his story:

“One day, I’m walking down the street and a guy comes up to me and says, “Do you have a dollar for four quarters?” He held out his hand with four quarters in it.
Curious, I engaged with [...]

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March 12th, 2009

What should you know about your email list?

If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Three Things.  This week: three things you should know about your email list.
You would think these three things are your number of subscribers, open rate, and click-through rate (plus perhaps a fourth:  churn rate), but Richard Rushing at Email Insider suggests something different:
What if you knew:
1. The value your [...]

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March 9th, 2009

Return on engagement

Sarah Evans has a great checklist over at Mashable: “Social Media for Business, The Do’s and Don’t for Sharing.”

Be transparent and authentic. Be Human – Create or join a discussion, don’t yell to a crowd.
A profile pic is worth a thousand tweets – does your pic help tell your story?
Leaving a Legacy – what you [...]

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February 19th, 2009

“It sure seems like we spend all our time on #4″

Seth Godin identifies the The Five Pillars of Success:

See (really see) what’s possible
Know specifically what you want to achieve
Make good decisions
Understand the tactics to get things done and to change minds
Earn the trust and respect of the people around you

and suggests, “It sure seems like we spend all our time on #4.”
Agreed.   The tactics are [...]

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February 13th, 2009

The secret for growing a giant list, revisited

Shayna’s post from a few weeks back, The secret for growing a giant list, asserted that “delivering true value is a secret of communications success that is easy to recognize, but hard to deliver.”  So true.
Adam Singer over at The Future Buzz continues the argument with his post As Your Content Expands, Things Get Easier.  He makes [...]

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February 3rd, 2009

User Experience: Not a one and done

First a little Ben Franklin to set the tone:

“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”
“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.”
“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

Then a couple of great thoughts from Whitney Hess’s post at Mashable: “10 Misconceptions about User Experience [...]

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January 30th, 2009

Keeping the Unsubscribe Experience Positive

I hate it when organizations make it difficult for me to unsubscribe. Sometimes it takes a week for messages to stop (typically with commerical businesses). Sometimes they require me to click through on a confirmation email or worse, email them with “unsubscribe” in the subject line (never works).  Regardless, by the time the emails are [...]

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