E-mail Fundraising Best Practices

As a lifelong activist, I have worked in non-profits throughout my career and have helped to raise funds for many organizations. In recent years, I have witnessed e-mail marketing become one of the greatest tools available to fundraisers.
E-mail marketing is both effective and cost-efficient - especially in comparison to the other fundraising tools available to non-profit managers. According to AMR Research, well-targeted e-mail marketing campaigns can generate response rates that are 7 to 12 times higher than comparable snail-mail marketing efforts.

Fundraising Idea of the Month: Incentives

Incentives are a great way to improve your bottom line, either by enticing people to pull out their wallets or by motivating even slightly better performances from your volunteers. When it comes to incentives there are many well worn options however if you use your imagination and make the incentives relevant and personal to your situation the effects can really pay off not in money but in the groups atmosphere and long term performance. A warning though, be vary careful that a rewards system does not adversely affect your bottom line. A badly thought out or poorly implemented incentive scheme can do as much if not more damage than no incentive scheme at all.

Ask a Pro: About Fundraising Holiday Shops

A fundraising holiday shop is a seasonal "store" at school where students can make holiday purchases, selecting from an assortment of inexpensive gift items sold on consignment by the sponsoring parent group.

Dress Day

Dress days like all good fundraisers are easy and simple to organise and fun to participate in. The point to a dress day is to have a change in the dress code for a day, either dressing up or down depending on the where the activity is taking place. Dress days are great activities for work places or at a picnic type event.

Don't Come Event

Do you ever feel that at times you would rather not go to that function? You feel that you would rather stay at home, grab a quiet night and help out a really good cause by doing so? Then the Don't Come Event is something that you should seriously consider using as a fundraising event.
Imagine how good people will fell towards you for saving them the effort or inconvenience of attending `another' time consuming function with `boring' speeches and people that they might not want to see again quite so soon or at all.

Online Donations - Strategy or Website Coinbox?

I recently reviewed a random sample of 75 websites of nonprofit organizations. I looked specifically at their strategy for online donations. Here is what we found:

Income Base

A major consideration of a fundraising group is to know who and what is their income base. All companies need to know where they will make their money so they can develop strategies to maximise this vital resource. If you don't understand this then you will have tough times raising the funds you need. Once you understand that fundraising is exactly like running a business then you will understand that copying what businesses do will benefit you greatly.
For grassroots' or small community fundraisers there are four main levels or areas to address:

Electronic Transfer

One of the hardest parts of fundraising is collecting the monies owed during the year, wouldn't it be nice to collect in way that was easy, time saving and someone else does most of the work? Well, this may be just what you are looking for.
Nowadays the ability to move money around electronically is amazingly simple and simply amazing. So simple in fact that there must be an opportunity for charities and fundraising to benefit somehow and there is. All banks and societies offer electronic banking, that is you sign an authority for them to pay your bills for you, or for your work to automatically transfer your wage into your bank account.

Sponsorships

Here is a short list of principles you should keep in mind when seeking or negotiating a sponsorship. Don't just try the obvious list of sponsors, get original! As long as you have something to offer - ask!

Managing Fundraising Efforts

Fundraising does take significant energy and effort. (Some people call this concept WORK.)
Different fundraising programs will need different levels and types of energy and effort, so you will need to compare your organization's resources with what will be required of a potential fundraising program.

Money Making Booths for Summer Fairs

Sometimes you need to do a fundraiser, but you don't need all the hassle of throwing an event yourself. That's where the concept of piggy backing a fundraiser on a larger more successful event can work wonders. One such opportunity is a booth at a summer fair.

Fundraising Idea of the Month: Don't Come Events

Do you ever feel that at times you would rather not go to that function? You feel that you would rather stay at home, grab a quiet night and help out a really good cause by doing so? Then the Don't Come Event is something that you should seriously consider using as a fundraising event.