Category: Uncategorized

I’ll keep today’s post short by asking you one simple question: “Do you know about the Non-Profit Blog Carnival?” In a nutshell, it is a monthly collection of blog posts focused on a singular topic. Click here for a more in-depth explanation from Joanne Fritz at about.com.

This month Marc Pitman, The Fundraising Coach, is hosting the carnival and the question being asked and answered is: “How do you keep your donors engaged for a second gift?”

Click here to visit the carnival where you will find links to 16 different bloggers offering free advice on donor retention.

I am privileged to be hosting the Nonprofit Blog Carnival in May, but I haven’t developed a question or theme yet. So, I thought it would be kind of neat to ask DonorDreams readers to offer suggestions.

Please scroll down and use the comment box to offer a question or theme. Your input is greatly appreciated.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com 
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

This year, Thanksgiving has done it again. It absolutely snuck up on me. With Thanksgiving coming up this Thursday, that means the madness of Black Friday begins at midnight.

You might be asking, why is Marissa talking about Black Friday in a social media column for non-profits? Well, the answer is I wanted to look at how nonprofits can use Black Friday marketing strategies and turn them into a fundraising drive. As you are most likely aware, many people make charitable donations during this time. Why not give them more reasons to do so?

This post may be a bit late-coming for your planning this year, but maybe some of these ideas can help you throughout the holiday season.

Bust Down Those Doors

Black Friday sales are all about door-busters. Retailers will give huge discounts on items starting really early in the morning, just to get people in the door. They are usually on high demand items and on items in small quantity. In my mind, I think that non-profits can do something similar.

Instead of running special deals on goods; nonprofits can run “specials” on donations (e.g. donations within a certain timeframe will used for a specific project). Changing the project or fund that will benefit will keep your supporters interested in what is next. It would also be an opportunity to expose your community all that your organization does.

Create Buzz with Social Media

When running a campaign like this, you will want to use all of your social media networks to their fullest. You have spent all of this time creating a following on each network, now is the time to mobilize your troops to help your cause. Here are few things to remember when doing so:

• Let people know what is going to happen. It’s ok to spoil a few of your plans. You want to get people interested.
• Photos are are your friend. Posts on social media that include photos are more liked and shared more than posts without photos. Including them will only help you out.
• Update early and update often. If you are going to run a campaign like this you want to keep your followers aware of what is happening. This not only keeps those who are following the event interested, but it also gives you an opportunity to attract new supporters.
• Give people a place to go. Be clear in your posts and give people direction on where to find information. If there is a donor form on line, attach the URL to every post. If people need to call in, make sure you have the phone number right there.
• Use social media managers to help you plan out your posts. Facebook allows you schedule your posts in advance and you can use a social media manager such as Hootsuite to help manage your posts on Twitter, Google+, and others.
• Respond to comments. If someone comments or asks a question, make sure you respond in a timely manner. Also, if someone shares a photo of yours, make sure you thank them for doing so. You want to collect as much good karma as you can.

I know that not every nonprofit will benefit from running a campaign like a Non-profit Black Friday, but maybe your organization can run something similar. Running fundraisers online will become more and more commonplace as people live more and more of the their lives online.

Has your organization already run a fundraiser online? What was successful and what wasn’t? I’d love to talk about it more in comments.

Here’s wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you all for reading Mondays with Marissa on Donor Dreams!

Welcome to O.D. Fridays at DonorDreams blog. Every Friday for the foreseeable future we will be looking more closely at a recent post from John Greco’s blog called “johnponders ~ about life at work, mostly” and applying his organizational development messages to the non-profit community.

In a recent post, John (who is a major Chicago Cubs fan as am I) wrote about the July 9, 2005 game between the Chicago Cubs and Florida Marlins. That was the game where Adam Greenberg got hit in the head by a pitch during his first plate appearance in the major leagues. John didn’t try to spin this story into an organizational development gem and just filed his thoughts under the category of “Just Because“. However, this post got me thinking about how difficult it is to be a non-profit executive director.

A few days ago a dear friend of mine approached me over coffee and asked what I thought about him applying for a local non-profit executive director vacancy. In hindsight, I wish I could take my words back because they were in the neighborhood of “Are you effin’ crazy?”

I know the source of my response came from a good place in my heart because what he doesn’t understand is that every day non-profit executive directors step to the plate and every day they get hit by pitches thrown by board members, volunteers, donors, staff, clients and random people on the street.

Perhaps, this is a dramatic analogy (and I am not comparing it to what Adam Greenberg has dealt with), but I do think at some level there is an appropriate comparison to be drawn.

There are lots of fast balls, and the good non-profit CEOs have great batting averages. Yet, there are still lots of hit batsmen. Here are just a few examples (all real, some silly, and some not so silly) that I’ve seen my fellow executive directors get hit with throughout the years:

• One board member chewed out their executive director for not including tuna fish on the menu at an annual campaign lunch kickoff meeting;
• One very large and influential donor just didn’t like the executive director (aka personality conflict) and would set-up periodic meetings that included herself, the executive director and a few of his board members. During those meeting, she loved to throw the executive director under the bus and make accusations about inadequate management.
• One fundraising professional decided that she would make a better executive director than her boss. She started setting up meetings with other staff members, important donors, and key board members and subtly steering conversations in that directions.

Ahhh yes . . . and this is just the beginning of what I’ve seen executive directors deal with. The high-and-tight fastball isn’t just a thing for which major league baseball players need to prepare. It is something non-profit executive directors and probably all workplace leaders need to be on the look-out for.

I also think I am begging a question here:

“What talents, traits, skill sets, and characteristics are important for a non-profit CEO to possess if they are to be successful?”

A dear friend of mine, Joe Lehr, from the Boys & Girls Club Movement once wrote an article titled “The Essential Talents of the Non-Profit Leader“. In that article, he identified five talents that he believes are foundational for non-profit leadership:

• Belief — passion, fire, and strength of conviction all stemming from organizational mission, vision and purpose.
• Vision — an ability to see the organization’s future and getting others to see and believe in it, too.
• Focus & clarity —  sorting through a lot of information, knowing what is most important, and getting others to see clearly see it.
• Maximizer — a burning desire for greatness and an ability to act as a catalyst for all other stakeholders to reach for greatness (via accountability, transparency, urgency, etc).
• Empathy — self-awareness, emotional intelligence, along with the intuition and ability to sense what others are feeling and thinking and use that to effectively communicate with others.

There are many other skills sets that involve fundraising, board development, and organizational development issues. I personally like what I once read in a book titled “How to Think Like a CEO: The 22 Vital Traits You Need to Be the Person at the Top” written by D.A. Benton.

From a skills, traits and characteristics perspective, what have you seen the best and most effective non-profit leaders? What resources (e.g. articles, books, websites) have you seen that do a good job of putting their finger on this issue? Most importantly, how have you seen boards figure all of this out during an executive search process?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com 
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847