10 Ways to Wake Up Your Nonprofit Brand

If you are like many small and medium sized nonprofit organizations, you are focused on your mission, dedicating staff to carrying out programs. Maintaining your website and getting visibility for your organization is often neglected or put on the back burner. And yet, marketing and promoting your agency is essential to attracting donors and ensuring [...]

FUNDRAISING: Effective Direct Mail Techniques

How effective is your direct mail? This package from the Audubon Society shows the elements and graphic techniques that make this piece appealing:

Use Icons to Tell Complex Stories

GreenDepot’s use of icons to explain the environmental benefits of their various products can serve as a model for nonprofits in telling a complex story. Each of their products features a strip of icons above the description to indicate the eco attributes they possess. You can then click to find out more about each attribute – [...]

Tips for Promoting Your Charity Event

In addition to raising money, your event is an opportunity to forge strong bonds with your donors and turn them into advocates for your organization. Here’s how: 1. Turn your donors into advocates for your cause. Outings, marathons and galas are great for raising money, but if the participants leave without really know much about [...]

RESEARCH: Creating an Effective Nonprofit Survey

Today, I received an email asking me to take a survey on the nonprofit sector and encountered a number of obstacles in getting to the survey. Here is my assessment and tips for improving the process.

Effective Low-Cost Marketing Tactic

In Madison Square Park today, people were handing out postcards with a pack of gum taped on. Free gum was an enticing offer and got me to take the postcard. The card itself had a compelling headline that invites you to find out more. Turns out, this is a promotion for a church. It’s not [...]

Top Ten Tips for Networking

So you want to be a ‘networker’ People often say that they wish they knew “how to network.”  There’s no doubt that networking is an essential component of business success.  In fact, The Executive Forum was founded on that very principle.  What surprises me, however, is the extent to which many people think of networking [...]

Things to Avoid on Your Website

Is your website doing all it could to explain your mission, galvanize members and generate support? I addressed this issue at a seminar at the Support Center for Nonprofit Management yesterday. We reviewed the participants’ websites and looked at common cause of homepage failure for nonprofits:

Quick Tips for Better Pics

As spring rolls around and you are planning your fundraising events, you will undoubtedly want to take photos for use on your website and in your fundraising materials. You’ll want to make sure that you have the best quality images you can t0 reflect positively on your organization. Naturally, it’s best to hire a professional [...]

Naming Nonprofits for Impact

I recently received an email that reinforced the importance of having a strong name for your nonprofit organization. Envirolution, a website leading the revolution for environmental jobs, was launching their latest project: The Win-Win Campaign — a youth-led small business energy and carbon efficiency campaign.The name Win-Win Campaign name made me grin — how can you go [...]

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