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Identifying the Sacred Cows That Are Holding You Back

Let’s say you’re committed to tipping some sacred cows. You are ready to challenge and evaluate everything: your mission, your approach, your revenue. How do you identify your organization’s specific sacred cows? In our first blog of this series, we discussed the various fundraising practices nonprofits perform religiously — often with the only strategy being…

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How Do You Tip a Sacred Cow? Strength and Patience.

Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We all tend to agree with this — but do we as nonprofits put it into practice? Particularly in our fundraising work? Echoing this same sentiment, management expert Tom Northrup once said, “All organizations are perfectly designed to get…

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Fundraisers Face Significant Retention Decline

Retention matters. It is sometimes the greatest—but most profitable—challenge you may face as a fundraiser. And it’s getting harder. That’s why DMAW is hosting a Lunch & Learn to provide a Retention Roadmap—answering your top retention questions and putting you on a path to file growth. For the past 10 years, donor retention has been…

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Monthly or Bust: Creating a Sustainer Culture

  On his very first day as membership director, Dane Grams strove to make monthly donors the centerpiece to the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) sustainer strategy. Why? Well, as he convinced the HRC development team—and now the audience at the DMAW Lunch & Learn: Sustainer Recruitment and Engagement event—monthly sustainers give the most money over…

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Direct Mail Copy for Skimmers, Swimmers and Divers

Direct response copywriting is a combination of art and science. There are thoughtful reasons behind the techniques, phrases and structure of the copy used in different media, as well as the way it’s formatted. It all begins with knowing that people consume information in different ways and that copy will be seen by very different…

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8 Years of Uncertainty is Enough

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net By Jordanna Sussman I recently attended DMAW’s Lunch & Learn “Industry Trends and Insights for the Nonprofit Sector”, presented by Carol Rhine, Principal Fundraising Analyst at Target Analytics. Here are my 4 Key Takeaways: The wealthy are driving charitable giving This was an overarching theme throughout Carol’s presentation:…

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Why I’m Co-Chairing Digital Day Again (and You Should Join Me There)

by Jared Schwartz, Vice President, Strategy & Innovation Beaconfire RED “Why I’m Co-Chairing Digital Day Again (and You Should Join Me There)” is reposted with permission of the author. This will be my 3rd year involved with DMAW’s Digital Day and my 2nd year as the conference’s co-chair. It’s been very rewarding to watch Digital…

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Charitable Giving: Donors Focus On One or Two Organizations

by Daniela Yu and Amy Adkins Charitable Giving: Donors Focus On One or Two Organizations is reposted with permission from Gallup. STORY HIGHLIGHTS Donors regularly give to one or two charities Fully engaged donors are twice as likely to plan to increase their funding A compelling brand or service promise engages donors Americans have a strong…

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Are You Leaving Money On The Table For Your Sustainer Program?

Telemarketing – It is the channel that sometimes just the thought of proposing can leave you wondering how many objections you’ll have to overcome. The September 17th Lunch and Learn “Leverage Telemarketing to Fuel Sustainer Growth and Revenue” presentation given by Molly Barker, Director of Marketing for Hillary for America and Meg Kross Lee, Vice…

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Leveraging Telemarketing to Fuel Sustainer Growth and Retention

We’re all friends here, right? So I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Almost every smart, thriving organization fundraising out there in the wild nonprofit jungle has a pretty key strategy in common. They are laser focused on growing and cultivating their monthly giving program. Seems like a no-brainer, right? Your donors…

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