The 2 Sources of Donor Motivation and Why Your Nonprofit Needs to Address Both Why do donors give? What motivates them to choose one nonprofit organization over another? Donor motivation must depend on more than just the cause, because many causes have multiple organizations all pursuing the same basic mission. There are many nonprofits supporting […]
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Category: Fundraising Principles
Why Isn’t Our Fundraising Strategy Working when It Worked for Other Nonprofits?
Why Isn’t Our Fundraising Strategy Working? It Worked for Other Nonprofits! How the Hidden Barrier of ‘Survivorship Bias’ Leads to Confusing, Frustrating Under-performance If you’re frustrated or confused about why your fundraising strategy isn’t working even though you read about it in books or articles, saw a webinar, or heard a presentation at a conference […]
Nonprofit Competition Is Real and You Need to Fight As If Life Depends On It
Nonprofit Competition Is Real and You Need to Fight As If Life Depends On It 4 Nonprofit Marketing Secrets for Attracting and Keeping Donors, Volunteers, and Supporters The enemies of nonprofit growth are not government, or political beliefs, or greed, or anything like that. Your enemies are complacency, presumption, and in some cases, a denial […]
Nonprofit Testimonials: The 2 Mountain-Moving Kinds You Want Most and How to Get Them
Nonprofit Testimonials: The 2 Mountain-Moving Kinds You Want Most and How to Get Them Testimonials have been used in marketing for over a hundred years. Their value in bringing prospects from considering something to deciding to do it is unquestioned. Nonprofit testimonials have the same power, but far too many nonprofits are under-utilizing this game-changing […]
10 Secrets to Blowing Past Your Matching Grant Fundraising Goals – Especially in the Covid Era
10 Secrets to Blowing Past Your Matching Grant Fundraising Goals – Especially in the Covid Era Tips to Elevate Your Email and Direct Mail Match Campaigns Matching grants are a tried and true fundraising strategy. And for good reason. Whatever you give, the gift is doubled (or tripled, or whatever multiple you have secured). The […]
Baggage-Free Fundraising – 4 Questions to Reveal and Dispel Your Negative Beliefs about Money
Baggage-Free Fundraising – 4 Questions to Reveal and Dispel Your Negative Beliefs about Money How to Prevent Your Personal Feelings about Money and Wealth from Crippling Your Fundraising Imagine a person who loves organic food, but dislikes farmers. Seems kind of silly, right? But when it comes to money and fundraising, a lot of fundraisers […]
Off-Season Fundraising Ideas that Deepen Donor Loyalty
Off-Season Fundraising Ideas that Deepen Donor Loyalty 9 Things Mid-size and Small Nonprofits Can Do the Rest of the Year If you’re like most nonprofits, your best months for fundraising come at the end of the year. Other times of the year could be called the off-season for fundraising – times when fewer people give, […]
16 Places You Can (and Should) Be Thanking Donors
16 Places You Can (and Should) Be Thanking Donors 6 Ways Donors Give, and How to Thank Them in Each Situation The data is clear: Thanking your donors early, often, and continuously pays you back many times over. Guidestar reports donor research that found that first-time donors who receive a personal thank you within 2 […]
How to Strengthen Donor Relationships: Applying Lessons from the Magnetic Marketing Growth Summit
How to Strengthen Donor Relationships: Applying Lessons from the Magnetic Marketing Growth Summit ProActive Content Founder Dan Magill Reports on Why and How Nonprofits Need to Prioritize Donor Relationships I recently attended the Magnetic Marketing Growth Summit in Denver, and though their emphasis is on marketing for businesses, so many of the principles I learned […]
Fundraising Tip: Aim for the Heart, Not the Head
Fundraising Tip: Aim for the Heart, Not the Head Behavior Research Confirms: Donors Don’t Care About Your Facts and Figures A more fun headline for this article might be this: Research confirms that donors don’t care about research. An article in The Guardian examines several research studies of donor behavior and concludes that donors respond […]
Is Giving Tuesday Worth All the Trouble and the Hype?
Is Giving Tuesday Worth All the Trouble and the Hype? 5 Keys to a Successful Giving Tuesday Campaign Is Giving Tuesday worth it? Does it really work? Or is it just another fad that, even though now several years strong, will eventually fade into the online dustbin of history next to Myspace, Aereo, and every […]
How Much Copy Should Be on Our Donation Page? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 1
How Much Copy Should Be on Our Donation Page? Plus: 4 Donation Page Copywriting Tips –Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 1 NextAfter performs fundraising testing experiments to help nonprofits improve their online fundraising. In support of using data to make better fundraising decisions, ProActive Content will be reporting on some of NextAfter’s experiments for the […]
Donors Who Don’t Get It & That You Can Afford to Lose
Donors Who Don’t Get It & That You Can Afford to Lose Don’t Let the Fear of Losing a Few Donors Cause You to Lose Many There’s a lot of fear in fundraising. If we send out too many emails, people will unsubscribe. If we ask for money too often, people will get angry. If […]
ProActive Content Is Speaking at the 2019 AFP NW Forum on Strategic Fundraising
ProActive Content Is Speaking at the 2019 AFP NW Forum on Strategic Fundraising Come Visit My Booth and Supercharge Your Fundraising Skills I’m pleased to announce that Dan Magill from ProActive Content has been chosen as a speaker at the upcoming Association of Fundraising Professionals Northwest’s annual Forum on Strategic Fundraising. The 2-day event happens […]
Make Them Hear You: Why Fundraising is Harder Than You Think
Why Fundraising is Harder Than You Think Lazy Marketing Projections and ‘Out-of-Thin-Air’ Goals Often Have No Relationship to Reality It’s a mistake made across all sectors of business in addition to nonprofits. We believe it’s easier to get people to do what we want than it really is. Read that again to make sure you […]
