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 (based on the super-popular Storytelling and the Art of Email Writing). 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...

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...

Um, wow! Over 300 people tuned in to the End of Year Fundraising webinar we gave with Salsa Labs last week. But if you or your colleagues missed it, never fear, you can still get in on our timely year-end fundraising tips by downloading presentation slides here or viewing the video presentation below. Our own Jonathan Benton covered the following: Why you should be fundraising at the end of the year (did you know that some nonprofits raise as much as 50% of their revenue for the year in December?!); How many emails you should send, what you should say in them, and when you should send them; How to...