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 […]
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Tag: fundraising tips
The Basics of Donor Advised Funds
The Basics of Donor Advised Funds How to Encourage Donors to Give to Your Nonprofit Through a DAF As a nonprofit, you’ve probably heard about donor advised funds, and you may even know a little bit about them. But are you actively pursuing donors who have a DAF and want to use it to give […]
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 […]
Why You Should Rarely Use Jargon in Your Fundraising
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs
The Overlooked Secret to Fundraising Copywriting – Verbs Part 1: 4 Fundraising Copywriting Tips on How to Use Verbs to Lasso Your Reader’s Attention “The little boy went far from home to look for food.” “The little boy traveled far from home to search for food.” Great fundraising copywriting shouldn’t be complicated. In fact, if […]
How to Attract, Convert, Cultivate, and Retain More Recurring Donors
How to Attract, Convert, Cultivate, and Retain More Recurring Donors 7 Sobering Recurring Donor Statistics, and the Action Steps You Need to Take In Response The Nonprofit Recurring Giving Benchmark Study from NextAfter contains some eye-opening data about how nonprofits could be doing a lot more to attract, convert, cultivate, and retain more recurring donors. Here’s […]
How to Write ‘Can’t Look Away’ Headlines for Nonprofits
How to Write ‘Can’t Look Away’ Headlines for Nonprofits 6-Step Guide Reveals How to Engage and Inspire Your Readers to Action In this media-saturated age, getting anyone to read your nonprofit’s content and fundraising appeals presents an unending challenge. Each new piece of content you send out requires a fresh motivation to be read by […]
4 Reasons Why So Many Nonprofits Fail to Produce Consistent New Content
4 Reasons Why So Many Nonprofits Fail to Produce Consistent New Content Is Your Nonprofit’s Content Strategy Failing? This Could Be Why Consistently publishing new content has a direct impact on the awareness of your cause and your growth in fulfilling your mission. Conceptually, this isn’t hard to understand. The more people who know about […]
5 Foundations for Building a Nonprofit That Changes the World
5 Foundations for Building a Nonprofit That Changes the World Why Nonprofits Fail, Part 2: Your Charity is a Business, not a Passion Project Read Part 1 here Your nonprofit is a business. If you started your nonprofit, then you are an entrepreneur. This is true whether you want to admit it or not. It’s […]
Guide to Nonprofit Christmas Card Fundraising
Guide to Nonprofit Christmas Card Fundraising Plus: 4 Reasons Why Holiday Cards Are Effective Should your nonprofit send Christmas cards? Yes! You’ll see why in a moment, but first here’s a quick 8-step guide to writing great nonprofit Christmas cards. 8 Steps to Writing and Sending Nonprofit Christmas Cards 1. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays? […]
The Mysterious Missing Donation Money from the Masses
The Mysterious Missing Donation Money from the Masses One-time & Recurring Donor Statistics Reveal Fountain of Untapped Small Donor Generosity Is your nonprofit neglecting smaller donors in pursuit of the big fish? Don’t get me wrong – a lot of attention is paid to getting major donors, as it should be. But as the statistics […]
Donation Page Giving Options – Testing Data Uncovers Huge Revenue Loss from One Simple Change
Donation Page Giving Options – Testing Data Uncovers Huge Revenue Loss from One Simple Change On your donation page, how should you present your giving options? Your three main giving options are: Only an open-ended field with no suggested giving amounts One or more suggested amounts Both suggested amounts and an open field for other […]
Ripped from Hollywood: The Anatomy of Fundraising Storytelling – How to Insert Donors into Your Narrative
Ripped from Hollywood: The Anatomy of Fundraising Storytelling – How to Insert Donors into Your Narrative 6 Components Every Well-Told Fundraising Story Must Have The power of story in fundraising is well-known. What’s less well-known is how to tell a story well, such that it motivates donors to want to take action. Besides fundraising copywriting, […]
