Nonprofit Answers: Nonprofit Fundraising, Marketing, Monthly Giving

When I joined Food for the Hungry just over 6 years ago, there was a lot I needed to learn about fundraising. In this special episode, I reflect on the lessons I've learn over these years and share the five secrets successful fundraisers know. You'll learn how to demonstrate urgency, how to be more direct with your ask, a mistake you're likely making in how you talk to donors, a lesson on using fa...

Storytelling is the foundation of excellent nonprofit marketing. Jeremy is frequently asked, "how do I effectively tell our story?" In this special episode, Jeremy Reis explores effective nonprofit storytelling that produces results. You'll learn the tips and tricks to writing great nonprofit stories that raise funds and builds relationships with your donors and stakeholders. Read the full transcr...

In this episode, Gary asks what, if anything, should we email major donors? This isn't an either/or answer, it isn't whether or not you send major and midlevel donors emails, but which emails and how often. Jeremy teaches you how to define a major partner email communication strategy and recommends which emails to send based on which segment the donor is in. This is a "can't miss" episode for majo...

Growing your email list is an essential part of digital marketing for your nonprofit. You will be able to create a new source of donors through adding people who have an affinity for your cause. Naturally, you're going to lose a percentage of email subscribes to attrition. Adding new emails will help keep your email file fresh. Additionally, it's a great source for new donors. In this episode, Jer...

Your donor is the hero. This is one of the hardest concepts for nonprofit staff to accept. They want their frontline staff to be the heros. They want to recognize the beneficiaries as the heros. Both are true, but in the context of fundraising, your donor is the hero. In this episode, Jeremy answers a question about how to position the donor as the hero in your nonprofit communications. Using exam...

Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a technology to show ads to a warm audience. In this episode, Jeremy discusses what retargeting is, how it works, two different types of retargeting, and how your nonprofit organization can use retargeting to get more supporters and deepen your relationship with existing donors. Read the full transcript at http://nonprofitdonor.com/episode12 Do you have a...

Blogging is not dead. Far from it. In today's episode, Jeremy answers a question from a nonprofit executive about how much blogging is right for his organization. This executive is being told by his team to blog every day, but doesn't understand why. Jeremy explores the types of posts we should write, how to measure the effectiveness of each one, and addresses the frequency of blogging. How do you...

In this special edition of Nonprofit Answers, Jeremy is live at the Christian Leadership Alliance with a timely question. At the conference, a nonprofit leader asked Jeremy how to properly give internal credit for income without causing problems with attribution and to reduce internal fighting over "credit" for donations. Jeremy explains the problem with internal sourcing of income and how they re...

Do you have a lot of email addresses on your file that aren't responding? Speaking from personal experience, Jeremy explains to Grant the steps to re-engage email subscribers and what to do if they continue to be unresponsive. For the health of your email file, you need to listen to this episode! Read the full transcript: http://nonprofitdonor.com/episode9 Do you have questions about email marketi...

Creating a sense of urgency in your appeal messaging will help move readers to become donors. What if you have a difficult time creating a sense of urgency? In episode 8 of Nonprofit Answers, Rob asks a question about how to create urgency in his appeals for a women's shelter. Jeremy explores why you want to create urgency and how to do it. Read the full transcript at: http://nonprofitdonor.com/ep...

Ever have someone who isn't a fundraising professional edit-out fundraising best practices? Have someone question your expertise and direct you to do something that lessens the impact of your appeal? On this episode of Nonprofit Answers, Julia asks a question about her Executive Director editing her appeals. How should she give feedback to him to help him understand why she is doing the things she...

Direct mail is not dead. Far from it, direct mail still performs well if you have a good strategy behind it. Many nonprofits are transitioning more investment into digital but aren't seeing the return in email that they've seen in direct mail. The lessons we've learned in direct mail still apply to email: you need a good story, you need to have a strong ask, and you need urgency. Today, we're goin...

Karen's organization has a partner who offered them a list of 25,000 email addresses. Her boss wants to just add them to their email service provider, but Karen doesn't agree. In episode 5, Jeremy gives Karen advice as to how to answer her boss and what to do with the opportunity. Read the full transcript at http://nonprofitdonor.com/episode5 Do you have questions how to use the assets offered by...

How does email design impact response in your emails? Often there are conflicting answers on blogs as different organizations experience different results when they change factors in their email marketing. In episode 4, Jeremy explores a question about graphics vs text emails and how you can test to determine the right factors to improve response for your nonprofit emails. Read the complete transc...

Have you ever hired a consultant to help you with a project, but when it comes time to execute, they disappear? This happened to Holly when she brought in a consultant to look at her email fundraising program. The consultant told Holly she should improve her segmentation and then disappeared before sharing with her a direction to go. In episode 3 of the Nonprofit Answers Podcast, Jeremy teaches Ho...

In episode two of the Nonprofit Answers Podcast, Jeremy Reis takes a question from Ryan who's frustrated with their turnaround time on disaster response fundraising appeals. This is a topic that really hits home: how do we decide if we're going to respond to a disaster and then get our appeals out the door quickly in email and direct mail? Jeremy shares how Food for the Hungry decides when to resp...

In episode 1 of the Nonprofit Answers Podcast, Jeremy Reis answers a question from Helen, a nonprofit marketing manager in Nashville. Helen is concerned about the recent algorithm changes with Facebook and wants to know what she should do. Should she continue to invest time and resources into Facebook? What changes should she make to her social media strategy? Read the full transcript at http://no...