There has never been a time like right now. Never. 

And despite all the chaos and pivoting and scrambling you have had to do this year, 2020 is providing your nonprofit a very unique opportunity as you gear up for these last few weeks of fundraising.

Your job is to embrace all of this. Don’t be afraid to ask for money (even as you show empathy for folks who might not be able to give this year.) Don’t be afraid to think about what your program could do if you could expand it...

Making a donation may be one of the most personal things we do, yet most nonprofits need help with connecting with their donors on a personal level, says Gabe Cooper, founder and CEO of Virtuous Software, a responsive CRM and marketing platform.

In this Marketer on a Mission interview, we discuss how nonprofits can use CRM programs to:

• Listen to their donors by pulling in data points about their donations, engagement, demographics and even where they go on your website;
• Connect with them by...

A question for nonprofits right now is what we can do as marketers to shore up our organization’s financial position as we weather this prolonged crisis. 

One option is to seek out new donors, but that can be an expensive way to go - about 10 times more expensive than retaining a current donor. But you’ve probably reached out to your current donor base (possibly more than once) during this challenging time. 

Where else can you turn? 

Well, there is a group that...

Do you ever find yourself in this situation?

You’ve sent out a killer fundraising email, and you know you’re on the right track because there’s a lot of opens. Even better, people are clicking through to your donation page.

But then the numbers take a dive and your potential donors just disappear. The conversions just aren’t there.

If that’s happening to you, it might be that your donation page is letting you down. 

Today’s episode is about the...

#GivingTuesday is eight weeks away.

Last year, individuals, civic coalitions, nonprofit organizations, schools and businesses in all 50 states raised more than $380 million online in the U.S. alone during the 24-hour event, which will be Dec. 3 this year. 

It’s still possible to run a #GivingTuesday 2019 campaign that will benefit your nonprofit - regardless of your size - if you start planning now. 

In this episode, I discuss:

• The powerful story behind #GivingTuesday...

As smart marketers, you know there are a lot of marketing options for your nonprofit to consider - for outreach, for advocacy and to engage supporters. Your job is to find what works best, is most efficient and delivers the best results. 

It will always mean experimentation and evolving your approach. You’ll need to try and try again to find what works. But there are ways to minimize the risk, the time, and the sheer frustration as you discover what has the most impact for...

About this time last year, a client of mine got some wonderful news. It had won a contract to run the region’s animal shelter. Now it could put into practice all of the things it wanted to see in a local animal shelter - a shift from “animal control” to “animal care”; initiatives that would increase adoptions and reduce surrenders; programs that would ensure that no animal lost its life because of a lack of space, funds or because the animal had a disease...

The evidence shows that email communication is still a vital tool in your nonprofit’s strategy to raise awareness, retain donors and find new supporters.

To tap into the true potential for email marketing, you need to keep building your email list. It’s a question you should ask yourself - what could your nonprofit do if you had more people to contact?

There’s some right ways (and a couple of very wrong ones) to go about growing your contact list and in this...

Here’s an eye-popping number - 40%.

That’s how much nonprofit monthly giving programs increased last year, and there’s no signs of this trend slowing down in 2019.

It’s easy to understand why everyone loves recurring gift programs: small donations that automatically renew make giving more manageable and convenient for your nonprofit’s supporters. Meanwhile, they provide more predictable funding and higher retention rates for heart-centered...

Retention rules.

It’s not just that it’s cheaper to retain a donor than to acquire a new one. That’s true, but there are some other reasons as well. Jay Love, legendary co-founder of Bloomerang noted in a blog that most major gifts come after a donor has been giving to an organization for five years. And even if your repeat donor’s gift is modest, you need to think about the lifetime impact this person could have; those small annual gifts surely do add...