Mobile: The next tech game-changer

Today's nonprofits are agile — a necessity when budgets are lean, government grants can disappear in a flash and fundraising is as critical as the programs you deliver. But recently, successful nonprofits aren't just agile, they're mobile — as in...

Think outside the kettle: Three holiday fundraising case studies

Like retail, charities get much of their revenue during the winter holiday season: those few precious weeks bracketed by the lead-in to American Thanksgiving in November and closing with Christmas. With the glut of fundraisers, toy drives and calls for...

Microgiving: Small acts lead to big successes

Can a few dollars produce significant impact? And by a few I mean very little. Because that's the idea behind microgiving, a relatively new approach to fundraising that asks multiple donors to cough up small amounts of cash to support...

Driven to give: Reducing the barriers to online giving

There is no such thing as a "small" nonprofit. Whether your cause is caring for just one refugee family or managing an entire displacement camp, running a rescue shelter for cats or saving an endangered species, to you — and...

Crowds: What are they good for?

Still sloughing off the effects of their 2008 banking meltdown, Iceland was in the news again recently when its government decided to amend their constitution by way of suggestions posted by citizens on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Otherwise known as...

Connecting with the wired wealthy

There's an attitude out there that online fundraising hasn't quite arrived yet in Canada. Almost every nonprofit does it, but most just don't devote much in the way of time or resources to it. I have met many traditional fundraisers...

Benchmark study shows online’s strength

Web-based fundraising is coming of age. That's the conclusion of the 2011 Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark™ Study, which evaluated the results of nearly 600 nonprofit organizations that use Convio's software. The study, released in early March, found that online...

The Giving (R)evolution

Canadians are a giving bunch, that much we know. The most recent Canadian Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (CSGVP) stated that in 2007 Canadians volunteered 2.1 billion hours, a 4.2% increase from the previous survey, though the average number...

Fifteen ways to improve your online fundraising

According to a recent survey1, online giving in 2009 grew significantly more than other revenue generation activities. In 2010, more nonprofits will engage in online fundraising than ever before, and they expect it to be their largest net growth area....