Social Entrepreneur blog for the world changers
Archive for June, 2010
Stroller Strides: Driven by Motherhood
Jun 30th
Lisa Druxman's fitness franchise has grown even faster than her children.
Reactive or Proactive
Jun 30th
There are numerous different strategies for raising money. Some organizations are long-term planners and set-up a development plan that they use as a road map throughout the year. Other organizations watch and wait for the right time to send out that perfect appeal. Following a plan and rapidly responding to changing community needs are both valuable and important fundraising skills. Often organizations fall on one side or the other of that line with a perspective that is either proactive or reactive when it comes to donor management.
Reactive and proactive donor management really are opposites. Reactive donor management provides you an opportunity to approach individual donors in a very focused and personal way. Often you can provide very custom thank you materials and have the flexibility to respond to urgent and last minute requests and opportunities. Proactive donor management involves the creation and adherence to a development plan. Those who excel at being proactive will plan out all of their campaigns for the year and the time line it will take to make those campaigns a success. Proactive management usually allows a development program to accomplish more in a given year, but it may not allow for as much last minute polishing of a project or solicitation plan.
It surprises me how little these two style of donor management are blended together. What kind of donor management style has your organization adopted? Any tips on how to be both proactive and reactive at your organization?
Related posts:
- Question: Fundraising Ethics
- Question: Who Asks for Money?
- Question: Building Community
- Choosing Donor Software: Things to Remember
Is trust the most radical and efficient thing we have?
Jun 30th
A little while back, I wrote a post about whether a trust-based society could help square the public service delivery circle: the idea being that, in a time of fewer resources but greater need, removing middling tiers of bureaucratic infrastructure...
Summer of WordCamp
Jun 29th
It’s been summer for about a week now. Whether you’re on vacation or burning the midnight oil, attending a local/nearby WordCamp is a great way to spend a weekend. Meet other WordPress users, developers, designers & consultants, learn a little something, maybe share a little of your own experience and knowledge, and break bread (or raise a toast) with new friends and collaborators. Here are the WordCamps scheduled for this summer, along with what I know about them.
July 3: WordCamp Germany – Berlin, Germany. I love it that they’re using BuddyPress for their event site. They have multiple tracks, and what looks to be a nice variety of sessions. It’s only a few days away, so if you’re thinking of going, get your tickets now!
July 10: WordCamp Boulder – Boulder, Colorado, USA. This was WordCamp Denver last year, but the organizers have decided to mix it up and go back and forth between Denver and Boulder, which also has a thriving tech community. This year the venue is the Boulder Theater (so pretty!), and there will sessions for bloggers and devs alike, plus a Genius Bar to help people get their WordPress sites all fixed up. The speaker lineup looks good, and I hear they’re pumping up the wifi this year. I’ll be there, likely hunched over a notebook with Lisa Sabin-Wilson (author of WordPress for Dummies and BuddyPress for Dummies) to talk about the WordPress User Handbook project, and/or hunched over a sketchbook with Kevin Conboy (designed the new lighter “on” state for admin menus in WordPress 3.0) to work out a new default WordCamp.org theme (using BuddyPress). You can still get tickets!
July 17–18: WordCamp UK- Manchester, England, UK. The roving WordCamp UK will be in Manchester this year, and is probably the closest to BarCamp style of all the WordCamps, using a wiki to plan some speakers/sessions and organizing the rest ad-hoc on the first day of the event. I’ll be attending this one as well, and am looking forward to seeing WordPress lead developer Peter Westwood again. I’m also looking forward to meeting some core contributors for the first time in person, like Simon Wheatley and John O’Nolan. Mike Little, co-founder of WordPress, is on the organizing team of WordCamp UK. Tickets on sale now!
July 24: WordCamp Nigeria – Lagos, Nigeria. Their site seems to have a virus, so no link from here, but if you’re in Nigeria and interested in attending/getting involved, a quick Google search will get you to the organizers.
August 7: WordCamp Houston – Houston, TX, USA. Houston, Texas, birthplace of WordPress! Fittingly, Matt Mullenweg will be there to give the keynote. WordCamp Houston is running three tracks — Business, Blogger and Developer — in recognition of the fact that people who are interested in using WordPress for their business may not actually be bloggers or developers themselves. This used to get labeled as a “CMS” track at previous WordCamps (including NYC 2009), but with WordPress 3.0 supporting CMS functionality out of the box, “Business” is a much more appropriate label. Who wants to bet on if there will be BBQ for lunch?
August 7 : WordCamp Iowa – Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Another placeholder page. Happening, not happening? I’ve emailed the organizer and will update this post once I know more.
August 7–8: WordCamp New Zealand – Auckland, New Zealand. They haven’t announced this year’s speakers or topics, but they’ve been running polls to get community input into the program. Of note: in 2011 WordCamp New Zealand will be shifting seasons and will be in February instead, when the weather is nicer.
August 20–22: WordCamp Savannah – Savannah, Georgia, USA. Disclaimer: I am completely biased about Savannah, since I’m one of the organizers. This will be the first WordCamp in Savannah, and it’s being held at the Savannah College of Art and Design River Club, an awesome venue that used to be a cotton warehouse or something like that. Since Savannah doesn’t really have a cohesive WordPress community yet (though a fair number of people from Savannah attended WordCamp Atlanta earlier this year), this WordCamp is aimed squarely at building a local community. We’ll have a local meet-and-greet, regular sessions with visiting speakers (lots of core contributors coming to this one, plus Matt), and on Sunday it will be combination unconference/genius bar/collaborative workspace. Oh, and a potluck! We’ll also be running a pre-WordCamp workshop for people who have never used WordPress but want to get started, so that they’ll be able to follow the presentations and conversations littered with WordPress-specific vocabulary over the weekend. Ticket sales just opened, so get your tickets now.
For a schedule of all upcoming WordCamps, visit wordcamp.org. The autumn schedule is already packed! If you don’t see WordCamp in your area and are interested in organizing one, get more information and let us know.
In Business and Family, Something Has to Give
Jun 28th
In the race to maximize all the hours in the day, entrepreneurial moms have to make difficult choices.
Matching Gifts
Jun 28th
I’ve spoken about matching gifts before, but I recently saw the power of matching and thought I’d share. I’ve often been skeptical about matching gifts because many nonprofits often have the funding already wrapped up by the time the match starts. I often wonder how much of my gift is really going to make a difference with matching, so it has not been a motivator for me personally.
We recently ran an employee campaign with a match from a community member and I was shocked at how well it worked. Everyone loved the idea that their gift would be matched dollar for dollar and that they could double their impact. One of our contributing factors to success was that we set a deadline with the match. We ran an event and told everyone that if they made a pledge that day it would be matched. As a result we were flooded with gifts. Everyone wanted to get their gift in before the timeline was up, and everyone wanted to double their support.
We asked employees who were not a part of the development team to make announcements about the match and the status of everyone’s giving. The response was overwhelming. In fact we had staff coming up to us just so they could make announcements of how much money we had raised without us even asking.
Have you used a matching gifts challenge? How successful was it? The challenge above went out to the employee community where I work but I have also run challenges with other stakeholder groups with less success. Have you found some groups to be more motivated by a match than others?
Related posts:
- Matching Gifts
- Major Gifts or Middle Giving
- Sample Solicitation Semantics
- A Day in the Life of a Major Gifts Officer
- The Major Gifts Fundraising Myth
Notes from the Nonprofit Human Resources Management Symposium in San Diego
Jun 25th
I am pleased to report that the Nonprofit Human Resources Management Symposium in San Diego was a success!! This was the first event that I planned from beginning to end and it was such a rewarding experience. I am thankful for the amazing human resource management experts who took the time to come and present at our event. I feel lucky to know such talented people in the nonprofit sector -- Lisa Morton, Laura Gassner Otting, Emily Davis, Joe Brown, Sherri Petro, Christopher Olmsted, Ann Shanklin, and Karen Horning -- you all rock!!!
I also want to thank my wonderful co-workers for helping with the event and most of all I want to thank my boss Laura Deitrick (director of the Caster Family Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research) who let me run with this idea. Laura, thanks for always believing in me and my ideas!!
I am happy to report that many of the speakers allowed us to post their presentations on slideshare for your viewing pleasure. We also had volunteer note takers capture key points from the breakout seminars. These notes are posted on the Institute for Nonprofit Education and Research's blog.
Please take a moment to refresh your HR skills by viewing the blog posts and presentations from the event.
If you are interested in more professional development opportunities in nonprofit human resources management, please register for the Nonprofit Human Resources Management Conference (October 3-5 in Washington D.C.), organized by Nonprofit HR Solutions.
I also want to thank my wonderful co-workers for helping with the event and most of all I want to thank my boss Laura Deitrick (director of the Caster Family Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research) who let me run with this idea. Laura, thanks for always believing in me and my ideas!!
I am happy to report that many of the speakers allowed us to post their presentations on slideshare for your viewing pleasure. We also had volunteer note takers capture key points from the breakout seminars. These notes are posted on the Institute for Nonprofit Education and Research's blog.
Please take a moment to refresh your HR skills by viewing the blog posts and presentations from the event.
If you are interested in more professional development opportunities in nonprofit human resources management, please register for the Nonprofit Human Resources Management Conference (October 3-5 in Washington D.C.), organized by Nonprofit HR Solutions.
Notes from the Nonprofit Human Resources Management Symposium in San Diego
Jun 25th
I am pleased to report that the Nonprofit Human Resources Management Symposium in San Diego was a success!! This was the first event that I planned from beginning to end and it was such a rewarding experience. I am thankful for the amazing human resource management experts who took the time to come and present at our event. I feel lucky to know such talented people in the nonprofit sector — Lisa Morton, Laura Gassner Otting, Emily Davis, Joe Brown, Sherri Petro, Christopher Olmsted, Ann Shanklin, and Karen Horning — you all rock!!!
I also want to thank my wonderful co-workers for helping with the event and most of all I want to thank my boss Laura Deitrick (director of the Caster Family Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research) who let me run with this idea. Laura, thanks for always believing in me and my ideas!!
I am happy to report that many of the speakers allowed us to post their presentations on slideshare for your viewing pleasure. We also had volunteer note takers capture key points from the breakout seminars. These notes are posted on the Institute for Nonprofit Education and Research’s blog.
Please take a moment to refresh your HR skills by viewing the blog posts and presentations from the event.
If you are interested in more professional development opportunities in nonprofit human resources management, please register for the Nonprofit Human Resources Management Conference (October 3-5 in Washington D.C.), organized by Nonprofit HR Solutions.
Charlie Kalsi: social entrepreneur from Hampshire
Jun 23rd
It's always a pleasure to go out to the various franchises around the country and meet the social entrepreneurs that are moving their projects along, and seeking to change things. Our Hampshire SSE has been running since the autumn in...
To Be or Not To Be- Donor Loyalty
Jun 23rd
Is donor loyalty changing? It would appear to me that older generations were more consistent about their giving. An organization could count on a monthly gift from their regular supporters and these individuals would give for years and years. Is that different today? Younger generations seem to respond more to a one-time appeal than give to an organization for several years. I think of Haiti as a perfect example. It is great to see how much people are giving to Haiti, but they are mainly one-time gifts. Almost all of the individuals who are giving to Haiti will not continue an ongoing investment in rebuilding and changing the lives of people in Haiti. They are giving in response to an appeal, to a horrible disaster that happened.
When I look at Haiti as an example of the new kind of donor loyalty I’m not sure if I should be encouraged or discouraged. On the one hand it seems that people today are more aware of what is happening in the world and want to help to make a difference. However, sometimes it appears that people give according to the biggest giving fad. Whether it’s Save Darfur, the (RED) Campaign, LIVESTRONG, or many other names, donations seem to go in phases to these groups. How should we respond to this developing trend? Does the decline in donor loyalty impact they way that we thank one-time annual fund donors? Should we invest less in cultivating repeat donor gifts? It sometimes feels like every campaign appeal I send out is written to sound more and more urgent. Does there come a time when we will need to differentiate between urgent needs and operational needs?
I’d love to hear back from you as to whether you have observed this as a trend or if it is just me. Is your organization experiencing a decline in donor loyalty? Do you have a hard time holding onto your monthly or regular donors?
Related posts:
- Donor Flavors
- What Motivates Giving?
- Keeping Info in Your Donor Database
- Donor Prospecting- What is the Point?
- Growing your Existing Donor Base
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