Whoa, I am totally blown away. 580 of you joined the storytelling webinar that my colleague, Steve Daigneault, and I presented earlier this week in partnership with NTEN and the Ad Council. Thanks so much for joining us! I’m definitely pumped about writing my next email appeal, and I hope you are, too. Steve and I had a few thoughts that we wanted to share with you coming out of the event, and we also promised we’d answer all the questions we didn’t get to during the webinar itself. Okay! Here goes: Sharing our number 1 take-away The big lesson is to make sure you cast the donor as...

I just can’t wait until 2 pm EST today, when Steve Daigneault and I will be leading a free webinar on how to avoid common storytelling pitfalls and make stories work in your fundraising appeals. If you’re interested in joining us and our partners, NTEN and Ad Council, there’s still time to register! Click here to RSVP. And if you’d like to read our storytelling whitepaper you can download the PDF right now by clicking this link. Hope to talk with you...

In January of last year I wrote up a quick summary on how some of our clients’ end-of-year online fundraising campaigns did vs. the prior year, and I thought it’d be nice to repeat the exercise to see how nonprofits fared in 2011. The results below come from aggregate data from 14 organizations we work with – a big thanks to them for letting us include their data in this post. These aren’t necessarily the same organizations we included in our write-up last year; this analysis compares two years of data for these 14 groups. So without further ado, here’s the scoop: A lot more...

Are the stories you’re telling helping or hurting your organization’s efforts to inspire giving and boost involvement? Find out when you join us and our partners, NTEN and Ad Council, for a free storytelling webinar led by M+R’s Steve Daigneault and Sara Wolfson. It’s Not You, It’s Your Stories:  How your fundraising appeals can tell better stories Wednesday, February 8 2:00-3:30 PM EST We’ll cover: Why not all stories work in fundraising appeals The basic requirements to telling the right story Concrete tips you can use every time you draft an appeal Click here to...

Are you getting ready to launch your year-end fundraising campaign? Before you hit send, make sure you’ve read these posts with our end of year fundraising tips: If you need a refresher on the big picture strategy for your campaign, like why you should send email appeals, when to send them, and what to say, then check out this recording of the End of Year fundraising webinar we held last month with Salsa Labs! Still stuck on what to say in your emails to supporters? Here’s one tip you should definitely use. Don’t reinvent the wheel: find out what tests and tactics worked for our...