Coming up with strategies for fundraising can be difficult. However, if there’s a culture in place that promotes and encourages giving as a norm, an important chunk of the work is already done. That’s why it’s so important to create a culture of philanthropy, especially in the nonprofit sector.
On today’s episode, Alia McKee and Mark Rovner of Sea Change Strategies are here to talk about their report, Inside Out Fundraising: How to Create a Culture of Philanthropy by Treating Systems Instead of Symptoms. Alia and Mark explain what it means to have a culture of philanthropy, the things that get in the way of creating that culture and how nonprofits can overcome the challenges to doing do. Listen to the episode to learn why culture is an important part of fundraising success and hear the big takeaways from their research.
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“Fundraising has become like driving a car with the emergency brake on. The car moves, but it’s not pretty and there’s a lot of friction.” –Mark Rovner
“I think the biggest “aha!” was that only one in five fundraisers say that their organization has a strong culture of philanthropy.” – Alia McKee
“Don’t get overwhelmed with all of the change that needs to happen. Think about how you can shrink that change.” –Alia McKee
Online fundraising has been around for nearly 20 years, and it continues to grow in both size and revenue amongst nonprofit organizations. In light of the increasing importance of digital fundraising and online giving, it’s important to look at what the field has learned about what works and what doesn’t, and how to implement proven best practices to ensure that nonprofits are making the most out of online giving opportunities.
Today’s guest is Jennifer Abohosh, the chief digital strategist for Dunham + Company, which recently released their second Online Fundraising Scorecard. Listen in to hear what Jennifer has to say about what’s changed in online fundraising over the last five years since their original Online Fundraising Scorecard, what types of organizations are seeing better performance in online giving than others, and how nonprofit organizations can start implementing best practices to improve their digital performance.
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“In email specifically, five years ago 46% of emails were mobile-responsive and now 90% of emails are mobile responsive.”
“How can we craft language around an email signup that will make it both exclusive and desirable to the end user?”
“Organizations should be doing some testing to continue to see what works and what doesn’t work for their particular organization, then continue to optimize the donation process along the way.”
You can’t pay attention to the news without hearing about the concerns and issues around data privacy and data protection. It affects every type of industry, government, and nonprofit organization out there. As of May 25th 2018, new laws will go into effect in the European Union that attempt to address these concerns for European citizens.
In today’s episode, I’ll speak to Cameron Stoll, a member of Blackbaud’s legal counsel team and the chief data protection officer for Blackbaud’s European companies. We will discuss the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and what they mean for NGOs both in and outside of the EU.
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“We have to have contractual relationships with these processors to make sure that they will abide by our instructions and to make sure that they can’t take that data and analyze it and sell it to another company, for example.”
“Ultimately it really comes down to very general principles: protect the data that you have, give people choices about how you’re going to use their data, and be really transparent about how you’re using the data you collect.”
“I think it can be seen as an extension of consumer rights on a really large scales across all industries in Europe.”
We all know that acquiring and retaining donors is one of the most important things nonprofit organizations must do to improve their fundraising performance. The question is how to do it – and do it well. This requires that we take a broader look at trends across the non-profit sector to help us better understand how our organizations are performing but also understand more about our donors.
To help us explore this and some brand new research from the Blackbaud Institute is Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud’s Chief Scientist and author of the Vital Signs Report. In today’s episode, he’ll share some of the changes that he’s noticed since the last Vital Signs Report and talk about what those changes mean for the future of the non-profit world.
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Blackbaud Institute for Philanthropic Impact
“I sort of put it into three categories. You could have more people giving more money, you could have fewer people giving more money, or you could have fewer people giving less money.”
“A big driver of this – not the only driver, but a big driver – is what some people are calling rage-giving.”
“If you can get over that initial hurdle and retain these new donors, these are pretty good donors to retain.”