It's that time of the year again. Among other things, you should take this opportunity to clean out your inbox and various folders. We've received a number of links in the past few weeks we'd like to pass on and will be doing this over the next few days. We also have some new resource information from the recent Association of Fundraising Professionals Conference coming your way. Stay tuned and have a great week!

As some of you know, we have been in the process of redesigning and testing our daily updates. Comparisons are difficult; partly because Feedburner analytics (our original provider of choice) are not the best; even for evaluating their own emails! Keep in mind, you must always test; we have discussed testing in the past and will continue to in the future. We cannot say it enough.

Whether it is the message, the subject line, the time of day, whatever, you must test. And test some more. One of our goals is to improve the look and readability of our communications; another to provide you, our readers, with additional information on a regular basis. In trying to evaluate the results, ...

The NonProfit Times announced the launch of an online portal that gives free access to corporate donation data for fundraising research to nonprofit grant writers and others researchers. The address is www.nptgrantsearch.com.

The research portal was launched with more than 4,300 searchable records of corporate donations valued at $1 million or more to U.S. charities.

 

The only free service of its kind, users can search, view and save information about the corporate donor, ...

As we wrote about on December 23rd in, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II Takes Up YouTube, today we find a very different use for this video channel as governments are learning to leverage the Internet and control their own message. The Office of the Prime Minister (here in Israel), has now followed suit. According to Haartez, "The government recently posted three videos showing images from the terror attack at Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshiva earlier this month in which eight students were killed." The paper continues, "TheMarker has learned that the Prime Minister's Office was actually behind the uploads to the popular video site. This is the first time that a government body has used the site in response to a terror attack. The first ...

Times have changed. The new donors of today and the donors of tomorrow are far different than the donors many nonprofits have become accustomed to. These up and coming donors are tech savvy. They grew up with video games and the World Wide Web. They are comfortable completing entire conversations and interactions via e-mail or text message. They instant message and talk on their mobile phone while browsing the Internet and reading up on the latest news. According to Darryl Gordon, a vice president at Kintera in San Diego, this is a lifestyle not imagined or experienced by the typical ...

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, The Wired Wealthy, we bring you this guest post by Katya Andresen, who summarizes the key points of this new survey and study.

Why You Need the Wired Wealthy

The economic news is sobering. Foundations are cutting back on grants as their endowments shrink. Corporations are reducing philanthrophic programs. What’s a fundraiser to do? One of my all-too-predictable answers, of course, is to look for new audiences online. That won’t surprise you - urging nonprofits to get online is part of my job and my belief system. There are younger, generous people online that you probably aren’t reaching in your other outreach. A typical online ...

Affluent people are increasingly likely to use the Internet to make their charitable donations, according to results of a study released today. But charities are also turning off some of their biggest donors — people who give $1,000 or more. Some charities send too many messages to donors who say they don’t want them, while others don’t take advantage of the interest many donors express in expanding their online interaction with nonprofit organizations. Two key findings:

• Four out of five donors said they had made a charitable gift online, and a little more than half, 51 percent, said they prefer to use the Internet for their donations. Some 46 percent said that they expect to make a greater percentage of their charitable ...
  Continue »
  Tags: web 2.0

Billed as a "a one-stop shop for tools to help advance your organization's mission in a smart, cost-efficient way," the newly launched Google for Non-Profits portal offers quick links to the most commonly used tools in the Google suite of services. It also highlights some cost-saving benefits that are available only to nonprofits. This site features ideas and tutorials for how you can use Google tools to promote your work, raise money and operate more efficiently. And to get inspired, you'll also find examples of innovative ...

Treat your e-mail subscribers with respect and protect your organization’s reputation through consistent database policies. Optimize one of your best resources. "Email marketers' most valued asset is the mailing list, but few take the necessary steps to protect it. Here are common vulnerabilities to avoid. What's your greatest email marketing asset? It isn't your list software, creative designs or even your budget. None of those really matter if you don't have a healthy, vibrant and engaged mailing list. Without your subscribers, whom I will assume have all opted in to receive your mailings, you have no marketing program, or at least not one that recovers its costs and adds value to your company. So, what are you doing to ...

From the Blog World...

“Online media rooms, and journalists’ expectations of them, have evolved. Many nonprofit organizations now feature ‘virtual press kits,’ but an effective online press room is more than just a media kit.

Your online press room should provide what you used to include in your hard-copy press kit, and then some. Here are the top ten must-haves:

• The absolute latest news
• Downloadable photos and graphics to accompany stories
• ...
  Continue »
  Tags: social networking, web 2.0