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Hybrid Board Meetings: The Future of Board Operations
The past two years have certainly been a whirlwind. Like many others, I’ve found remote work to be a double-edged sword. As much as I’ve enjoyed the freedom it offers to work from wherever, I also really missed the energy of being in the same room as others who are passionate about their work. Leading a nonprofit remotely can be a very similar experience.
Board service is a commitment. That means doing what you can to come together despite the challenges you face — global pandemic or not. Growing a nonprofit during a crisis takes extra energy and motivation. That being said, you don’t want to put anyone in an uncomfortable position by running a fully in-person meeting. People will either not show up or be resentful that your organization is making them come together during a pandemic. Many people are still uncomfortable being around others — vaccinated or not. And that’s alright!
On the other hand, some people really thrive in an environment where they’re working face-to-face. Working remotely inhibits their creativity and stifles their energy. Why not offer the best of both worlds? Hybrid board meetings are a catch-all solution that makes working together enjoyable for everyone!
5 Ways to Use Donor Data to Streamline Strategic Planning
Your donor data provides a window into what your donors want and need from your organization. It can help you anticipate their expectations and align yourself with them. Doing so can greatly set you apart from other organizations that only react to data rather than making proactive strategic plans.
Before you can use your donor data to gain insights, you need to ensure that you’re properly collecting and managing it. Good data management is an essential habit for staying organized and is especially important for finding valuable trends in your donor data.
Once you’ve set yourself up for efficient and secure data management by investing in a donor database, you can start improving your strategy with these five unique ways to leverage your donor data:
Improve Communications
Increase Engagement
Secure Major Gifts
Improve your Volunteer Program
Manage Your Finances
Are you ready to build a strong and data-informed strategy? Let’s get started!
Delegating Work to Volunteers: A Guide for Nonprofits
Over the past year, many nonprofit organizations have struggled to secure funding and keep important programs going amid the ongoing effects of the pandemic. This has resulted in a greater appreciation and reliance on volunteers.
Reliable and dedicated volunteers can be one of the greatest assets for your nonprofit, and with that comes the responsibility to ensure that each volunteer is placed in a role where they can make the most impact.
Creating a dedicated strategy for delegating volunteer work can help set your organization up for long-term success. With the help of effective tools and strategies, you can collect and store valuable information about your volunteers that will help you match each volunteer to the right role to ensure they can thrive and maximize their positive impact.
In this guide, we’ll explore the best practices and strategies for delegating work to volunteers in the following sections:
The Essential Steps of Delegating Work to Volunteers
6 Tips for Delegating to Volunteers
Choosing the Right Technology to Support Your Development Team
Your nonprofit’s development team acquires funding to keep your organization going. Unfortunately, each individual fundraiser on your team is only able to speak with a certain number of donors, manage a certain number of grant applications, and plan a certain number of events. There are only so many hours in a day, and the last thing you want is for your nonprofit’s staffers to feel overstretched and underappreciated.
This team brings in much-needed donations from a variety of sources. While it may seem counterintuitive, assessing your technology and making an initial investment may be the key to this team’s success.
The nonprofit sector has a pervasive fear of spending money— a fear that leads organizations to be irrationally frugal. If an organization wants to continue growing its fundraising capabilities— and with that, its impact in the community— it’ll need to spend money on increasing the capacity of its development team.
How Text-to-Give Can Help You Meet Your Fundraising Goals
Looking for a new, effective way to increase your organization’s funding? Enter text-to-give for nonprofits. This method of donation is one of the easiest ways for your constituents to give to your cause. With mobile giving, they can give from anywhere in the world, on their own digital devices.
Updating your routes of giving is essential for nonprofit organizations to meet donors where they are. Text-to-give takes the guesswork out of donors navigating a physical donation form or finding your website on their own.
To get started with text-to-give, your team will need to understand how and when to implement this tool, as well as how to look for an excellent provider for optimal results. Here are a few best steps to get started:
Understand how and when to use text-to-give
Use an effective text-to-give software
Pair text-to-give with an event
Let’s jump into the best ways to use text-to-give capabilities.
How Google Ads Can Further Your Nonprofit’s Mission
Nonprofits, due to their governing structure and limited resources, must be extra careful with the investments they make to market their causes to the public. Therefore, nonprofit leaders need to carefully consider every investment and seek opportunities that are of specific benefit to nonprofit organizations.
At Nonprofit Megaphone, we’re experts at finding these opportunities to help nonprofits further their mission. Our specialty is the management of the Google Ad Grant, an opportunity that is exclusively available to nonprofits. The Grant gives nonprofits the ability to affordably use Google Ads, creating a sustainable and effective way to conduct digital marketing.
4 Best Practices for Making Your Virtual Gala a Success
The shift to online interactions this past year has caused nonprofit fundraising development directors to rethink how they engage supporters. In particular, organizations moved their traditional, face-to-face events online, creating remote meetups and virtual interactions.
Some fundraising events translate to virtual spaces better than others. But this doesn’t mean that they can’t still be successful at bringing in donations and building donor relationships.
For example, your nonprofit may be skeptical about its ability to host hybrid and virtual galas. Many of the major draws to galas such as food, live entertainment, and dressing up don’t carry the same impact over video cameras. However, with careful preparation and an understanding of what can be accomplished with digital platforms, your gala can emulate the engaging atmosphere of an in-person event and powerfully reinforce your nonprofit’s dedication to your supporters.
4 Data Management Tips to Free Up More Time for Nonprofits
As a nonprofit professional, you’re always looking for new opportunities to use your time wisely, create better systems, and maximize your mission impact. Maybe you’re trying to improve communication skills, create more effective fundraisers, or even hire new team members. The one place that almost every nonprofit has room to improve? Data management.
All organizations deal with data. Whether you’re using a massive spreadsheet to keep track of your donors or a fully built-out CRM system, you have access to information about your supporters. But too many organizations think to themselves, “I’m saving this information for the future” rather than considering how they can use the data in their current situations. This approach creates two major issues for that organization:
The nonprofit often doesn’t take an active role in organizing and cleaning this data.
The nonprofit isn’t using that information to maximize their time and strategies.
If you’ve found that you’ve plateaued in your fundraising efforts or relate to the issues above, there are opportunities to improve your organization’s data management strategies. In this guide, we’ll cover four key tips that you can use to make sure you’re maximizing your time as an organization by freeing up what’s currently spent on unoptimized data management strategies.
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Outlook for Spring 2021
There’s no denying that the unique circumstances of 2020 led many of us to go against the traditional fundraising methods, removing in-person interactions and transitioning annual events to the digital sphere seemingly overnight. While some organizations excelled, others experienced noticeable drops in overall engagement and revenue.
At this point, we’re a year into the pandemic and we have data on what worked and what didn’t in last year’s virtual peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. We can use this data to predict the P2P fundraising outlook for 2021 and take clear actions to fulfill supporters’ expectations of the virtual environment.
At GoodUnited, we help nonprofit organizations better understand, inspire, and cultivate relationships with their peer-to-peer supporters through social media. While thoroughly researching Facebook fundraising and the current peer-to-peer landscape, we’ve noticed a few trends that can help your organization navigate P2P in 2021. This guide will explore the outlook of peer-to-peer fundraising in a pandemic world through the following points:
The State of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Following 2020
What’s Coming Down the Pipeline for P2P Fundraising Trends
Before we dive into the trends that you can incorporate into your 2021 fundraising calendar, let’s take a look back at 2020 and how the year’s uncertainties impacted the peer-to-peer landscape.
How to Inspire Volunteers to Serve and Continue Serving
Guest Post - Chris Barlow of Beeline
While there are a lot of tactics shared by volunteer management experts, there is one overarching principle that I believe can inform your entire approach to working with volunteers, an approach that will leave your volunteers encouraged and inspired to continue to partner with you in your mission.
That principle is called the emotional bank account.
How to Fulfill Donors’ Expectations in a Virtual Environment
Regardless of their mission and size, nonprofits of all types share the same questions right now: how do we navigate this virtual environment and continue engaging with our donors? With COVID-19 impacting the philanthropic landscape on a daily basis, the answers to those questions have taken on new levels of complexity and importance. Growing a nonprofit in the current fundraising environment can be intimidating to even the most experienced fundraisers.
Right now, your development team needs to step up its efforts to continue fulfilling donors’ expectations and keep them involved in your mission.
3 More Beliefs That Keep Nonprofits From Growing
“What’s keeping you from growing your nonprofit’s funding?”
That was the first question on a survey I conducted before I spoke at a workshop for nonprofit Executive Directors earlier this year. I wasn’t surprised by the answers--they were the same things I hear from leaders all over the country running big and small organizations.
Can you guess what the top answer was?
“Not enough time.”
It’s a puzzle, and you won’t grow until you solve it.
The Top 2 Nonprofit Growth Inhibitors That Stop You From Fundraising
“What’s keeping you from growing your nonprofit’s funding?”
That was the first question on a survey I conducted before I spoke at a workshop for nonprofit Executive Directors earlier this year. I wasn’t surprised by the answers--they were the same things I hear from leaders all over the country running big and small organizations.
Can you guess what the top answer was?
“Not enough time.”
I’ve been there. It’s a real Catch-22: