Steve Thomas | May 29, 2009
Today we’re continuing our series of the Top 10 Questions You Must Ask Your Agency (or Consultant) with the #2 Question!
If you use a consultant or an agency to help with your fundraising or marketing you have to ask these 10 questions…and be happy with the answers you hear back.
Number 2 on the list of [...]
Steve Thomas | May 27, 2009
Your fundraising copy always asks one question—the Big Fundraising Question. Even if you don’t realize it, you’re asking it. If you answer the Big Fundraising Question in a way that connects with your donor’s passion you’ll raise more money than if you ignore it.
Ready? OK, here’s the Big Fundraising Question:
“If I give you my $10 [...]
Steve Thomas | May 26, 2009
An easy mistake to make in fundraising and marketing for nonprofits is to think that all of your donors are like you. What you like, they like. What you respond to, they will respond to. What moves you will move them. Not so.
The harsh reality is that your donors aren’t exactly like you. You hate [...]
Hoots and Thomas | May 25, 2009
On Mondays here at Oneicity, we have asked you to thank people who really make a difference in the work you do. We’ve called it good job monday.
Oneicity is very pleased to tell you about our friends over at Aqubanc and donor.com who have formed a partnership that could make your work more than a [...]
Steve Thomas | May 21, 2009
Yesterday I mentioned search engine optimization in the discussion on improving your online fundraising. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is taking the steps you can to improve your rankings in a web search. If someone is searching for you, you want to show up on their search pages as soon as you can (on the earliest [...]
Steve Thomas | May 20, 2009
We’re thinking of easy, cost-effective ways you can increase your online donations. We’re going to focus on some easy, but overlooked basics.
An April 2009 survey offers an interesting perspective. ForeSee Results surveyed 2,000 respondents to gauge their satisfaction with nonprofit websites.
There were a couple of easy “take-aways” for me out of this report [...]
Hoots and Thomas | May 19, 2009
A huge part of the Twitter culture is the twitterfying of words. OK, that twitterfying thing is our word, but the Twitter culture does have all sorts of created twerms: Twestival, tweeps, tweighbor, twoop, twibe, twitcetera (twitcetera is ours, couldn’t resist).
Twamway is another one of our words. We’re combining Twitter and Amway. Sorry if you’re [...]
Steve Thomas | May 18, 2009
We have several posts coming your way on easy, cost-effective ways you can increase your online donations. We’re going to focus on some easy, but overlooked basics.
An April 2009 survey offers an interesting perspective. ForeSee Results surveyed 2,000 respondents to gauge their satisfaction with nonprofit websites.
One important finding for today’s discussion are the [...]
Steve Thomas | May 15, 2009
Today we’re continuing in our series of the Top 10 Questions You Must Ask Your Agency (or Consultant)!
If you use a consultant or an agency to help with your fundraising or marketing you have to ask these 10 questions…and be happy with the answers you hear back.
Number 6 on the list of Top 10 Questions [...]
Steve Thomas | May 12, 2009
Direct mail…it’s wanted dead and alive! So here are two secrets about direct mail fundraising and six things for you to do about it.
1. Direct Mail is dead. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again. Dead. Yesterday postage rates increased 2 cents to 44 cents for 1st Class postage. My quick [...]
Hoots and Thomas | May 11, 2009
Two weeks ago we suggested you “tell someone you work with how they made last week better.” And we called it “Good job Monday.”
Well today we want to say “Good job” to our friend Jason Alba whose company JibberJobber is celebrating its three year anniversary today!
Jason Alba, while not someone who works directly in our [...]
Steve Thomas | May 8, 2009
This is the sixth post in our “Ask your agency” series. Today we’re asking question number 9. At the bottom of this post you’ll see links to the previous posts in this series. And, yes we’re not doing them in order, that’s far too boring.
The Top 10 Questions You Must Ask Your Agency (or Consultant)!
If [...]
Steve Thomas | May 7, 2009
A subtext of the discussion from yesterday’s post has been bouncing around in my brain. I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth but there was this theme running through the conversation that asking for money is a bad thing. Maybe it was all the talk of community and conversation as opposed to asking [...]
Steve Thomas | May 6, 2009
Hoots batted me a blog link yesterday. Ed Nicholson over at Tyson Foods had this thought in his blog,
“Yet the overwhelming majority of the communication I receive from some hunger organizations is, “Please send us another ten dollars. It will help feed twenty hungry kids.” I know this. So do the tens of thousands [...]
Steve Thomas | May 5, 2009
One of the biggest barriers to blogging (or developing any kind of social media presence) is time. Writing takes time–lots of time. Most ministry leaders and nonprofit executives don’t have time to spend on blogging or social media in general. Unfortunately, the reality is that by not finding a way to blog and/or develop social [...]
Steve Thomas | May 4, 2009
One simple truth to improve your website design: according to Nielsen Online, Americans average 56 seconds on a webpage before they click off. You can find more details here. 56 seconds, that’s not much time on your precious webpage.
Here’s how to make that statistic work for you rather than against you:
1. Edit ruthlessly. You have [...]
Steve Thomas | May 1, 2009
Today, in our series of questions you need to ask your agency or consultant, we poke around about integration. Just ask them: “How do you integrate fundraising and marketing: online/offline; analytics/strategy; traditional media/social media for me?”
Gone are the days when you could risk having separate messaging or branding. Big or small, you must have [...]
