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Annual, Individual Fundraising for Small, Smart Nonprofits.

3 myths about online giving (and what you need to do about them)!

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It’s no secret that online giving has grown into an incredibly important channel for nonprofit fundraising.

Over the past decade we’ve seen consistent growth in online giving across the board. The 2016 M&R Nonprofit Benchmark Report found that between 2013 and 2014, online fundraising increased for their participants by 13%.

Even more impressive is the growth smaller nonprofits are experiencing.

The 2015 Individual Donor Benchmark Project (you can read the fascinating report focused exclusively on small nonprofits here) found that from 2014 to 2015, online revenue increased by 130%. From 2013 to 2014, it grew a whopping 403%!

So, we clearly need to have a solid grasp of what is working and where we’re heading with online giving. We want to understand why it’s growing so rapidly and what this growth means for our fundraising approach.

But sometimes the implications of this data are misinterpreted. This has led to some widespread misunderstandings about what’s truly going on with online fundraising.

So let’s clear up some of those misconceptions right now. [Read more…]

Designing a simple test of your email fundraising campaign

If you’ve ever attended a seminar, or read a book or website post about nonprofit email communications, no doubt someone’s told you you should be testing and optimizing your emails. For small nonprofits, figuring out how to do testing can be a daunting task, even more so in the case of year-end email fundraising appeals, which hit in the midst of an already overwhelming fundraising season.

So why should you make the time to design, plan, and implement a test of your email fundraising appeals? [Read more…]

Follow-up Your Year-end Appeal with Email

This is the 4th article in our year-end follow-up strategy series.

So your appeal is in the mail and you are ready to think about emailing a follow-up to your donors.  We all know how to email! It shouldn’t be that complicated, right?

Except that when you do sit down to get started, you may realize there is actually quite a bit to figure out.

For instance, if you’re unfamiliar with your email software or if you’ve inherited an email list that either wasn’t managed well in the past or doesn’t integrate with your donor software, determining where to start can be overwhelming.  I’ve dealt with this before and it isn’t pretty.

Or you may begin to wonder, “How many emails do I send?” or  “When is the best time to send them?”  You’ll need images.  You’ll need a ‘donate-now’ button.  You’ll need new stories to tell.

It is enough to make you think twice about even starting.

Here is a brief guide to get you over the hurdle.  The really good news is that once you pull this off, you’ll officially have created a “multichannel fundraising campaign!” [Read more…]

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Smart Annual Giving helps small nonprofits harness the power of a well-planned, well-resourced annual giving program.

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