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September Nonprofit Blog Carnival How do you say thanks?

How do you say thanks? When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.― Maya Angelou We often focus on the end of the year as a special time to be thankful. But honestly, gratitude should be a daily practice for those of us working for great causes. How do you keep donors around? […]

Filed Under: Blog, Donor communications Tagged With: gratitude, Nonprofit Blog Carnival, thank you letters 8 Comments

The gift they want from you

  I’ve been writing a lot about the role of emotion in fundraising. That’s because it’s so important! But let’s take it another step. Fundraisers often talk about relationship fundraising as opposed to transactional fundraising. You know donors aren’t ATMs and shouldn’t be treated that way. But there is an exchange that happens with a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Donor communications Tagged With: emotional fundraising, emotional triggers, fundraising appeal 5 Comments

Why Mr. Spock can’t raise money

Why Mr. Spock can’t raise money Poor Spock. He’s caught between his tidy Vulcan logic and messy human emotion. Most of the time, he relies on Vulcan cool. That wouldn’t work well for fundraising, though. Human beings don’t make purely rational decisions. This isn’t my guess; it’s science. We make decisions in the older part […]

Filed Under: Blog, Donor communications Tagged With: donor communications, emotional fundraising, neuropsychology 2 Comments

Why you don’t want to be a tool

You don’t want to be a tool, do you? Who do you read to make you think? One blog I like to check in on is Trevor O’Donnell’s Marketing the Arts to Death. As the title says, it’s about arts marketing. But to me, it’s broader. Trevor shows how mistaken arts marketing often is. Because […]

Filed Under: Blog, Donor communications Tagged With: arts marketing, donor-focused 4 Comments

Are you too pretty to work?

Have you gotten a really beautiful appeal recently? It could be an email, or it could be a fancy direct mail package. I have to wonder about their effectiveness. So many are pretty to look at, but not moving. And that’s a big problem. Shiny postcards on heavy paper. Four-color imagery and brand-specific fonts. Reverse type (because […]

Filed Under: Blog, Donor communications Tagged With: donor-centered fundraising, fundraising brochure, thank you letters 8 Comments

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