Updates & Resources
Stay in the Know
Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) Q3 2022
This report comes out quarterly and measures year over year changes in trends like number of dollars raised, number of donors, retention rates, etc. The trend from Q3 2021-Q3 2022 is more dollars are being raised from less donors, with acquisition and retention rates falling.
It’s Not Too Late: 3 Strategic Year-End Fundraising Tips
Did you know that nearly one-third of individual fundraising happens during the month of December and 12% of giving happens in the last week of the calendar year?
You don’t want to blow this opportunity to raise what will likely be a significant amount of your nonprofit’s yearly revenue! With that in mind, here are some year-end fundraising tips to help you make the most of your online fundraising efforts.
How to Write a Better Thank-You Letter (and why it matters)
According to Penelope Burk’s book Donor-Centered Fundraising, only four out of ten donors say they always receive a thank-you letter after they make a donation... which means that the other six donors either receive one sometimes or – gasp – not at all.
2023 M&R Benchmark Study
2022 sure was a spicy year. For all things digital this is the report for you. It details topics like digital fundraising, email efficiency, and social media advertising. These metrics can help you be more informed when making decisions regarding the digital side of your fundraising program.
npEXPERTS: The Great Reset
For many years, we have talked about the emergence of community-led engagement. With information at their fingertips, people no longer wait to be called on to communicate or contribute. Constituents desire autonomy—as consumers with causes—in their communities. Last year brought new challenges and opportunities. As organizations were forced out of their comfort zone and into remote home offices, it demanded a reimagining of service delivery and community education.
Dealing with Donor Erosion
Most fundraisers don’t even need Artificial Intelligence, machine learning or the expensive gibberish of donor personas and clusters to drive away their donors. Every organization, regardless of size, can significantly reduce attrition and dramatically improve donor lifetime value by paying serious attention to Donor Service.
Your overall goal is to keep your donor giving and giving over many years. Your thank you letter is an essential first step in building a long and happy relationship of generous support from your donor.
This is how you create a sustainable fundraising program – developing consistent and repeated gifts from loyal donors who are passionate about your work.
Fundraising Effectiveness Project: Giving Increases Significantly in 2020, Even as Donor Retention Rates Shrink
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) is a collaboration among fundraising data providers, researchers, analysts, associations and consultants to empower the sector to track and evaluate trends in giving. While giving benchmarks increased across the board in 2020, donor data was very mixed, reflecting how the pandemic and pandemic relief efforts changed how traditional donors gave and the number of new donors who felt inspired to contribute.
5 Ways to Supercharge Your Direct Mail Copy
There are many ways to tell a story. And unfortunately, in direct mail, too many of them sound the same: same flat tone, same passive verbs, same sense that you’ve read this a hundred times before. Here, lifted straight from the short-story writers’ playbook, are five techniques you can use to inject new life and energy into the stories you tell (and the results you receive).
Nonprofit KPIs: How to Choose the Best Metrics to Measure Your Organization’s Performance
Nonprofit KPIs can change the way you work by helping you narrow in on what’s working and what’s not. In this article, we’ll be sharing our favorite KPIs to track, as well as some practical tips for picking what matters to your nonprofit.
Cat People and Dog People
This is about Identity and the values and goals that go with being a cat person. All other things equal (like the experiment) and when made salient (i.e. guy holding cat) we look to reinforce our values and sense of self by choosing somebody like us. How does this play out in charity world for an organization in the animal space?
Blackbaud Giving Index 2020
Tracking nearly $30 billion from over 7,100 organizations in U.S.-based charitable giving, the Blackbaud Institute Index is updated each quarter and reports year-over-year percent changes as well as giving to date for the last 12 months. Featuring overall giving trends, the Index can be viewed by organization size and subsector.
Is Using the Statistical Average Bad for Nonprofits?
Can a statistic be bad?
Maybe “bad” is a bit of an an overstatement but the “Average”, a universally used statistic can sure hide a lot. And without assigning malice or intent to the “hiding”, reliance on the average as an input to decision making can result in lots of bad outcomes.
