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Customer Success Manager at Blackbaud Canada

stalled campaignYour fundraising plan is written, your volunteers have been trained and you are ready to go out to ask for a donation to solve an identified problem in your community. Everybody’s ready to go! Except nothing happens. It’s so quiet in your office that you can hear the crickets. Your phone isn’t ringing. It seems like your campaign has gone sideways…potentially into the ditch. Here are 10 practical tips for defibrillating your fundraising campaign back to life.

creekside-design-web-commsIMPORTANT guest post by Creekside Communications. Creekside created my mobile-friendly website last year. Please check that your not-for-profit websites, and especially your donation pages are mobile friendly! Recently, Google announced its search algorithm would be tweaked and the web would need to be ready for sweeping updates as of April 21, 2015. The updates focused on mobile usability and were nicknamed “mobilegeddon,” heralding what was expected to be a devastating turn of events for some: Those whose websites were not ready would “be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.” In other words, websites that were not considered mobile friendly would potentially be eclipsed out of rankings, possibly never to be found again. Cue the panic from businesses and not-for-profits worldwide.

jenny and charlotteThis year I decided that my household was going to have great mornings. No more of this dragging kids out of bed. I wanted to change my habits because  I hated the way I started my day with all that stress and negativity. I stumbled upon a study that said that if you think positive thoughts you will be 19% more productive! Wow! I liked the sound of that. Now what did I have to do to make that happen?  The steps I took reminded me a lot of the mental commitment required to be a good fundraiser. Want to be more positive in your workplace? Here are the steps to make it happen.

1)      Think positive thoughts

jen laurette“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”  ~ William Bruce Cameron, Sociologist

Guest post by Jen Laurette, Associate Director, Development and Alumni Relations at  Queen's University

Let’s start with the None at All. For various reasons, some organizations avoid using performance metrics among their fundraisers and instead take an all-hands-on-deck approach to collectively reaching the organization’s overarching goals.  I have worked for organizations that employed this approach - whatever you raised was seen as a win. While this can feel great, the lack of direct accountability can lead to status quo becoming the norm.  While staff retention was strong and we functioned as a team, who’s to know how much we may have been leaving on the table. Let’s move to the Good in Theory. 

jane griffith photoJane Griffith Practice Leader - Academic and Not for Profit at Four Corners Group, Inc  joined today’s Fundraising Mastermind call to talk about trends and hot topics in the not-for-profit world. Her advice and comments were so powerful that I immediately sat down and wrote this blog post.  Here is Jane’s advice for competing in the competitive landscape of not-for-profit executive search jobs. It’s a competitive landscape It seems awfully competitive out there because it is! People are not retiring like they used to, and the people that ARE competing for jobs in the not-for-profit sector are also coming from the private sector. There is a huge amount of competition.