Tag Archives: non-profit

Top Tools for the Season of Giving

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The clock is ticking. You’re counting on this year’s Season of Giving to help you hit those lofty 2012 charitable gift goals that seemed so reasonable last December when you were working on your 2012 budget.  You’re not alone. Network for Good reported that last year, 1/3 of annual giving happened in December, and lots of organizations receive up to 70% of the charitable gifts they receive each year in the fourth quarter.

Looking for a little help to make that happen? The right tools can make a huge difference. Check out these tools and services that are designed for nonprofits to make it totally easy for supporters to donate to your cause, and even easier for you organization to evaluate successes and maximize each gift.

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5 Ways to Increase Membership and Member Engagement Using Mobile Apps

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Here’s the scenario. Your organization has already put a lot of time, resources, and brainpower into developing a mobile app for smartphones or tablets (or maybe you’re in the process of developing this awe-inspiring app as we speak). Let’s say your app distributes content about your cause to anyone who successfully installs the app. That content could be anything from action alerts to campaign updates to a daily photo of a cute baby endangered animal who needs help.  That core content is free to anyone who has installed your app, and that’s not going to change. You’ve also developed paid content, let’s say it ranges in price from $.99-$4.99, because you wanted to monetize your mobile apps. That was a fantastic idea on paper, but the problem is that now nobody is downloading your paid content. Bummer.

You’ve already put the development time and budget into developing the paid content, so let’s think about how we can get the most out of it now. If the app isn’t revenue generating, maybe it’s time to view it as a tool to grow your membership and encourage member engagement instead. After all, if you have more members, and you have more engaged members, a bump in donations is sure to follow (feel free to borrow that logic when you explain the change in strategy to your development team).

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Getting the Most Out of Corporate Partnerships

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Picture this scenario (we have a feeling it won’t require too much imagination for anyone who has worked in corporate relationships at a nonprofit or association). You spent weeks researching potential corporate partners, scouring old news articles, LinkedIn, and Twitter feeds looking for any tidbits of information that might suggest someone high up might be sympathetic to your cause. Once you’ve narrowed your search to a few promising prospects, say the VP of marketing who posts daily pictures of her cat, the CEO who used to volunteer at a local humane society in his college days, and the EVP of Finance who mentioned in an article from 2008 that he actually likes tofu, you spend agonizing hours crafting your pitch, trying to appeal to their humanity while also explaining how cause marketing can help their bottom line. It’s a rough balancing act, but once you’ve got the ask perfected, you hit the send button or leave a voicemail, flinging your proposal out into the big vast ether with a hope and a prayer, fingers crossed that you sent it to the right person, it won’t get stuck in a spam filter, and you’ll actually hear back. Now you have to play the waiting game… Until, miraculously, you get a response!

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How to Fundraise Using Pinterest

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Ok, so last week we looked at ways to inspire, engage, and educate the public using Pinterest.   Now we’re going to get down and dirty and talk about what every non-profit actually wants to know- “Can you use Pinterest to raise money?” The answer is yes. Yes, it is possible to fundraise through Pinterest, BUT (did you see that coming?), honestly, Pinterest is probably never become your organization’s top fundraising source. Nonprofits who are already actively attempting to use Pinterest to raise money for their organizations are giving it mixed reviews.

We still think it’s worth trying, as long as you don’t sink a ton of time or resources into it. Here’s why- Pinterest is more likely than any other social network to drive revenue.

  • 20% of Pinterest users who have pinned an item have gone back and purchased it later, a high conversion rate for social media
  • Shoppers who come to your website from Pinterest spend 10% more than visitors from other social media networks
  • Eventually, Pinterest is expected to account for 40% of all social media purchases.

If you’re ready to give it a go, let’s look at how successful nonprofits are currently using Pinterest effectively to rake in cash.

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7 Ways to Use Pinterest for Nonprofit Marketing

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Here’s a little known fact about SheerID; if you peruse the resumes of SheerID’s staff, you’ll notice that 2/3 of the marketing team has spent years marketing for nonprofit organizations. That’s one of the many reasons that nonprofits are especially near and dear to our hearts here at SheerID, and why we’ve come up with a business model that provides most nonprofit organizations and associations with our cause marketing and member engagement tools free of charge.

Of course, we’re also marketing geeks, so we have a tendency to get excited about new social media marketing opportunities like Pinterest. We get practically giddy when we combine the two and start thinking about how nonprofits can use new social media marketing tools to make the world a better place. It starts out as an idea for a blog post, and next thing you know, we’re publishing eBooks, writing a blog series, and creating photo galleries of our favorite nonprofits on Pinterest. We can’t stop ourselves; we’re just helpful like that.

On that note, we hope you enjoy this little presentation of eight organizations using Pinterest super effectively.

Our list includes some of the big players that media outlets like Mashable and TechCrunch have been covering because they’re just too good to ignore, but it also includes some smaller, lesser known organizations that are using Pinterest in exciting, innovative ways. So why did we focus in on these eight? Through their descriptions, pins, and boards, each one perfectly illustrates how you can use Pinterest to support your own marketing efforts depending on the goals of your organization.

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Pinterest: It all starts with an image

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We’re thrilled to bring you our first guest blog by web pioneer, author, keynote speaker, and digital marketing strategist, Aliza Sherman. Aliza is renowned for her expertise in social media marketing, and she has established herself as a valuable resource for anyone interested in the practical applications of emerging technologies and social networks.

When we started researching and writing our new e-book, Pinterest: A Guide for Nonprofits and Associations, reaching out to Aliza for her take on the up-and-coming social sharing site was a no-brainer.   We’re so pleased that she took the time to help out and share her thoughts with us here.

-Angela

Introduction

The way we communicate with others has changed forever. Ten years ago, none of us were using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to further our missions or reach out to our stakeholders. We weren’t soliciting donations from our social networks because those interconnected websites that connected us to our friends, family, followers and fans did not yet exist.

In less than a decade, sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now Pinterest have transformed the way we communicate forever. Our messages have to be more concise, more compelling, more interconnected, often with links, images, and video. They have to be worth repeating, sharing, retweeting, reposting and also be in a format and on a platform where these actions can happen easily.

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Something you don’t know

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98% of the time, we’d honestly rather talk about you.  We’re here to listen to your secret biz dev hopes and dreams, your innermost feelings about your IT team, and your most excruciating pain points. It gives us the chance to swoop in and play the hero by offering SheerID’s solution, a role we relish.

But today, we feel like bragging a little, so it’s your turn to listen.  Hopefully,  you already know SheerID offers a powerful verification service that allows retailers to offer protected military, student, and teacher discounts ( to name a few) AND that you can use our service to actually manage your coupon codes. “Blah, blah, blah,” you’re thinking. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

Did you know that it is also possible to use SheerID’s platform to raise money for your favorite non-profit organizations (or allow organizations that you’re a part of to negotiate better member benefits for you)? Now that we’ve got your attention, here’s a little eye candy for you.  If you work for a non-profit, you might want to consider printing a few of these out and hand delivering them to your corporate partners. Or contact us, and we’ll send it to them for you. We’re nice like that.

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