When it comes to planning a campaign, it’s important to be efficient at all times. Explore these fundraising software tips to make your next campaign count. 

As a non-profit professional, running a successful campaign means putting a lot of thought, organization, and time into your efforts. Have you also considered the ways in which technology can make your efforts even more efficient?  Today, fundraising software is a mainstream tool that many non-profits are using to boost donation revenue, engage with their donors, and maintain a high level of efficiency in their campaigns.  [si_guide_block id="30094" title="Download our Business Resource – Social media communications for not-for-profit organizations" description="This guide aims to give a clear structure to help you grow internal confidence and buy-in so that the benefits of social media can become visible and it becomes more…

Marketing your non-profit is essential to the success of your cause and luckily, the internet offers numerous possibilities – you just need to make the most of these opportunities

Non-profits and charities often have small budgets and few people to help with their marketing strategies. But without a good marketing strategy in place, how do you raise awareness of your cause? How do you attract more supporters and donors to help support your cause? Marketing your non-profit is essential to the success of your cause and luckily, the internet offers numerous possibilities – you just need to make the most of these opportunities. In this blog post, I’m going to share 3 effective strategies for non-profits and charities.

Advertise online…for free?

Google Ads can be extremely successful; they appear right at the top of search results so they’re the first result people see when doing a Google search. …

Tips on how to create a non-profit marketing plan with limited funds

Non-profit organizations face one of the biggest digital marketing challenges of all: having limited funds or no money at all. Nonprofit organizations have to operate and thrive in marketing their cause without spending a substantial amount of money. This is difficult because bigger organizations have the funds to spend on online advertizing. You can develop a marketing plan that helps navigate the unique challenges of nonprofits, and keep the nonprofit’s budget, objectives, strategy and other important considerations in perspective.

Creating a Nonprofit Marketing Plan

Objectives

What will the proposed marketing efforts achieve? Objectives can include big-picture goals such as educating the public about core issues and connecting with public figures or politicians. Make your objectives as concrete as possible, for example: Grow your list of email subscribers Increase membership by 25% amount Promote X, Y or Z service Make sure your list of objectives is in…

Involve Your Pets - A Strategy For Successful Content And Social Media Fundraising

Clever fundraising ideas for charity giving are a must these days, when people are rather jaded from years of the same old coffee mornings and bake sales. If you’re after inspiration for something a little different, that might attract new fundraisers to your event, why not lead with the new trend – pet participation. Content is key for any campaign and fundraising event, and a strong marketing strategy should contain priority content areas to promote. Cancer Research UK’s fundraising Best Paw Forward campaign in 2013 is a great example of this and could give you the inspiration you need to run a pet-focused fundraiser of your own and help charities with donations. Why is having a key content marketing strategy important to fundraising events? It makes sure you socially target the right…

Overcoming objections to use of social media in not-for-profit organisations

Social media can be beguiling, stimulating, addictive, confusing and at times downright frustrating. In my experience, Not for Profits, like commercial organisations, are still grappling with how much valuable staff time and resource should be deployed to this burgeoning and proliferating media. In order to fully embrace and capitalise on social media often objections, real or perceived, need to be overcome to win over internal stakeholders. Common concerns include: Suppose people post negative comments about us? How can we control it? Do we need 24/7 resourcing? How can we prove that it works? Isn’t this distracting us from the important work we’re doing? Do we have enough content to be able to have a credible presence? Although charities face the same challenges of many other professional organisations, they do have some distinct advantages: Source of truth and integrity: Trust as we all know is very important online and, like all…

7 success factors for managing charity websites

Balancing the interests of diverse audiences of a charity site is a real challenge, magnified by the diverse communications needs of different teams within a charity. Given these diverse needs, it's no surprise that many charity websites struggle to communicate effectively and encourage interaction with different audiences. I have seen some truly compelling charity websites which we feature in the new Smart Insights guide to website best practice for Not-for-Profits and charities, but there are many more that don't, some with lack of focus shown by a confusing carousel or slider on the home page. In this post, I take a look at some of the common challenges that charities need to recognise before embarking on redesigns to improve effectiveness.

Management barriers for effective charity websites

Some of the key barriers to success that I have seen when working in NfP organisations are: 1. Lack of clear aims. Gaining a…

Non-profits need to use big data and mobile to present clear messages in 2016

2015 has seen charities gaining increased confidence to streamline, simplify and even surprise. With increasing demands from an ever increasingly digital savvy audience, standing still has not been an option.

The larger charities are capitalising on ever more sophisticated opportunities gained from insights and improved team working and systems.  The best of the medium to small size charity websites are finding cost-effective ways to improve experience such as featuring user-generated content.

There are a host of encouraging trends in the sector, but these ones stand out to me due to their take up across the sector and positive impact are: 

1. Clarity of message

It would seem that many charities have pared down their offering on key pages to focus on core content and calls to action.…

A review of the latest digital marketing approaches for charities and not-for-profits

Digital marketing is now a core communications method for Charities and Not-for-Profit organisations (NfPs). Charity websites give a great platform as a vital communications channel to inspire and engage people, raise funds, provoke discussion and explain the benefits and use of services provided through fundraising.

Trends in digital marketing  for charities?

The future direction of Digital Marketing for charities was discussed by Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights at a recent keynote delivered to the Comms Rewired conference organized by The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) - the membership organisation for Scotland’s charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. [slideshare id=39786189&doc=digital-marketing-trends-for-nfp-davechaffey-scvo-141002024327-phpapp01] You can see in the Slideshare that Dave reviewed examples of how charities are using digital communications across the Smart Insights RACE planning framework. Dave recommended that content marketing should be a the heart of charity marketing. As our Inbound marketing blueprint suggests, this requires these 6 key actions Dave…

Using staff email signatures to communicate your brand messages - a case study of British Red Cross

My journey with staff Email Media started 3 years ago when I rocked up to start a new job and had a loooooong list of induction meetings, one being with my Email Media Account Manager Tamsin. Now I will admit something here, I like to think that I have a good understanding of email marketing, transactional email, and trigger emails, but I was feeling slightly red-faced that I didn’t know much about what you could do with your employee emails.

Email Media is simply a technology that links up with your employee email system such as Outlook, google apps or lotus notes etc., it adds dynamic (and trackable) footers and headers to all employee emails which supports the brand and your business objectives.

In my role at the time I used Email media to support revenue,…

Engagement tips to drive offline action - a not-for-profit campaign example

At charity @vInspired, digital and social media is key to engaging with our young audience. Retweets, mentions and comments can be an early indicator of success, but they are only transitory metrics and not our end goal.

Source: All images: vInspired

If we're not getting young people to take a real-world action, to volunteer, then we are just measuring digital outcomes - what some call vanity metrics.

Our recent research, 'Online Engagement, Offline Action' explores digital behaviours that can be harnessed to help young people discover the value of volunteering. We identified four digital trends that can help us and other organisations use digital engagement to drive offline actions.

Four digital trends to help digital engagement drive offline actions

1. How can…