Why You Should Rarely Use Jargon in Your Fundraising Don’t Let the Jargonasaur Scare Away Your Donors Maybe it’s my background in education, but I can’t stand jargon. I’ll never forget reading about the school board candidates in my voter’s pamphlet one year. One of their descriptions was so packed with industry jargon, buzzwords, and […]
Fundraising & Copywriting Blog
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 […]
9 Steps to Rediscover Your Passion for Your Nonprofit Work
9 Steps to Rediscover Your Passion for Your Nonprofit Work Remember Your ‘Why’, and You’ll Overcome Discouragement and Weariness Nonprofit work is hard. For most nonprofits, the difficulty doesn’t just relate to fundraising. Most of you are doing work that touches some part of this world that has great needs, experiences traumatic suffering, or endures […]
How to Write a Nonprofit Blog that Engages Supporters and Motivates Action
How to Write a Nonprofit Blog that Engages Supporters and Motivates Action Nonprofit Blog Writing Best Practices: Content, Structure, SEO, Growth, and Examples Many nonprofits struggle to write blogs consistently. Reasons why this happens include a lack of time, but also an uncertain confidence that blog writing accomplishes anything. However, another reason nonprofits fail to […]
5 Tips for Increasing Planned Giving Commitments to Your Nonprofit
5 Tips for Increasing Planned Giving Commitments to Your Nonprofit How to Motivate More Donors to Put Your Organization in Their Will In 2017, donors gave a total of $410 billion to charity. Of that, $35.7 billion came in the form of planned giving bequests. That means about 9% of charitable gifts are given in […]
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 […]
8 Clever Ways to Increase Your Nonprofit’s Email Open Rates
8 Clever Ways to Increase Your Nonprofit’s Email Open Rates How to Beat Typical (and Declining) Industry Open Rates According to an annual study from M&R Benchmarks, 13% of all online fundraising revenue in 2018 was driven by email. So the importance of keeping your email open rates as high as possible needs no convincing. […]
Is Our Facebook Ad Copy Length Too Long? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 4
Is Our Facebook Ad Copy Length Too Long? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 4 In support of using data to make better fundraising decisions, ProActive Content has completed this 4-part series based on some online fundraising experiments from NextAfter. See Part 3 – Best Location for your Email Signup Form Today’s question: Why Doesn’t Anyone […]
Where Should Your Email Signup Form Be Located? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 3
Where Should Your Email Signup Form Be Located? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 3 In support of using data to make better fundraising decisions, ProActive Content will be reporting on some online fundraising experiments from NextAfter for the next four weeks. See Part 2 – Are Your Emails Over-designed? Today’s question: How Does the Location […]
Are Your Emails Overdesigned? Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 2
Are Your Fundraising Emails Over-Designed? See How Email Design Affects Donations Online Fundraising Testing Series Part 2 In support of using data to make better fundraising decisions, ProActive Content will be reporting on some online fundraising experiments from NextAfter for the next four weeks. See Part 1 – How Much Donation Page Copy Should We […]
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 […]
ProActive Content’s Dan Magill Delivers Presentation on How to Grow Nonprofit Email Lists Using Google Ad Gran
ProActive Content’s Dan Magill Delivers Presentation on How to Grow Nonprofit Email Lists Using Google Ad Grants Practical and Helpful Guide Unveiled at 2019 AFP Forum for Strategic Fundraising Fundraising copywriter and consultant Dan Magill gave a fast-paced, information-heavy talk in an afternoon session at the Forum for Strategic Fundraising on Thursday, June 6th. After […]
46 Silent Auction Ideas to Boost Revenue and Make Your Gala FUN
46 Silent Auction Ideas to Boost Revenue and Make Your Gala FUN The 2-Question Test to Determine If an Item Is Worth Procuring The more silent auction ideas you have to work with, the easier it will be to procure enough winners to ensure a successful auction without taking too much of your time to […]
Complete Guide to Donor Survey Best Practices and Question Ideas
Complete Guide to Donor Survey Best Practices and Question Ideas How to Acquire Survey Data that Strengthens Your Fundraising and Communications At the 2019 AFP Forum for Strategic Fundraising in Bellevue, Washington, Ariel Glassman from The Ostara Group led an outstanding presentation about donor survey best practices. She, along with the executive director from Kirkland Performance […]
How to Create the Perfect Donate Button
How to Create the Perfect Donate Button A Quick Analysis of Color, Size, Placement, and Text for Nonprofit Call to Action Buttons, Plus a Free Button Evaluation The smallest parts of your website can produce the biggest change. Namely, the donate button. One of the missions of ProActive Content is to find ways to boost […]
7 Steps to Reduce Your Donation Form Abandonment
7 Steps to Reduce Your Donation Form Abandonment Up to 83% of Your Potential Online Donors Are Giving Up. Here’s What to Do About It There’s a lot more crossover between businesses and nonprofits that some would like to admit. That means we can learn from each other. One such item is what businesses call […]
Volunteer Survey Reveals: How to Increase Volunteer Motivation at Your Nonprofit
Volunteer Survey Reveals: How to Increase Volunteer Motivation at Your Nonprofit Why This Matters: Because 83% of Volunteers Are Also More Willing to Donate Where They Volunteer Do you understand your volunteers? Do you know what motivates them to give freely of their time to help your nonprofit? Volunteer motivation is critical to understand if […]
How Nonprofits Can Increase Open Rates in 7 Seconds
How Nonprofits Can Increase Email Open Rates in 7 Seconds Changing Who Your Email is From Can Increase Opens by 18% Want to increase open rates for your nonprofit’s emails? There are three ways to do it that aren’t overly technical: 1) Write better subject lines 2) Add good pre-headers 3) Change your sender […]
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 […]
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs Part 2: Fundraising Copywriting Smackdown: Verbs vs Adjectives See Part 1: 4 Copywriting Tips on How to Lasso Your Reader’s Attention with Verbs What language best engages readers and motivates them to give your cause How do you tell fundraising stories well enough to evoke a […]
