Mashed potatoes, freshly carved turkey, and cranberry sauce. Boy was I stuffed after Thanksgiving dinner last week. But my pants weren’t the only thing busting from the seams – so was my inbox. Every year, more and more organizations send out “thank you” emails around Thanksgiving. I got at least four emails with the exact phrase, “we’re thankful for you.” While it’s important to thank your supporters, is there something else you can do to make your organization’s Thanksgiving message stand out? We saw a lot of Thanksgiving emails last week. Most of...

Every year, our client, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), has to fight for its city funding – but this year the stakes were especially high. While it was a tough year for a lot of local governments and many organizations were feeling the pain, the budget proposal in front of City Hall called for an especially severe cut of more than 50% for WCS’s Bronx Zoo and New York Aquarium. We’d worked with WCS on a highly successful campaign to beat back similar cuts the year before, but with city officials scouring the budget for more and deeper cuts this time around, it was clear that we needed...

By now, everybody has heard about the historic victory for marriage equality in New York. Late on Friday, June 24, the New York State Senate passed this important piece of legislation and the Governor promptly signed it into law. A big win for progressives and for an important cause! One major reason this success was so meaningful beyond state borders was because the Human Rights Campaign effectively engaged marriage equality supporters everywhere, not just in New York. But how do you build a groundswell of support for a state-specific issue where only the state’s residents can directly...

Organizations stand to gain a lot by promoting online videos that go “viral.” But what does “viral” really mean, and how can your organization increase the likelihood that a video will become an internet smash hit? This was the topic of a panel I attended at Netroots Nation called “Video Built To Spread: Creating Online Vids That Work”. Coming out of the session, I realized that a lot of organizations are still very unsure how to effectively use video as a tool to achieve their goals. Over the years, we’ve worked with our clients to leverage video for a wide variety of opportunities,...

M+R’s Colin Holtz and Steve Daigneault are helping give storytelling tips to the New Organizing Institute online community! Check out their most recent tip here, and cross-posted below. Storytelling can take your online campaign to the next level. But are you using stories effectively? Groups regularly add stories to email appeals. The online team at M+R Strategic Services decided to put stories to the test, and discovered that story-based email appeals often performed worse than fundraising emails without a story. But not all story-based appeals fall short. Steve Daigneault and Colin Holtz,...