Tagged communications

Retire the donor pyramid? Replace it with a vortex? What’s a fundraiser to do?

I urge you to read The Permanent Disruption of Social Media, in the Winter 2013 edition of Stanford Social Innovation Review.

The authors’ premise is that in a world of social media, the old pyramid or ladder metaphor of donor engagement isn’t relevant any more. (If it ever worked at all.) But the old model implied a somewhat orderly process of communications and solicitations tied to giving frequency and levels. The bigger your gift, the more valuable you are, the more worthy of personalized attention.

The authors accuse this approach of being a one way street, from organization to donor, that ignores the new reality of influence.

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Nonprofit marketing – from the inside out

Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits.

There are dozens of books out there on marketing your nonprofit to attract new supporters, advance an advocacy agenda or keep the donors you have. But this is the first book that I’ve read that specifically targets marketing “from the inside-out.” That is, this book focuses on the people who work or volunteer for you.

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Keep it simple to be remembered

For those of you in public charities, even though you can’t go near candidates in the sense that you don’t want to do anything that remotely smacks of electioneering, you can certainly learn from their campaigns. Candidates especially have to make their ideas (or impression of themselves) stick as they’ve got very little time to reach us before it’s time to pull the lever.

Okay, no levers anymore. Ink in the middle of the arrow.

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