Don Akchin

“Every nonprofit’s email list has gold,” asserts Ifdy Perez, a partner in the social marketing collaborative Razoo. Even if your database has only the most basic information, you can still extract precious nuggets of intelligence from it.  She has some interesting ideas for how to go about it.

A heap of useful books are being published online and offered for free. Here are this month’s best: Short and Sweet: The Why’s and How’s of Twitter from Fenton Communications, authors of a number of excellent tomes on communications. You can read a preview on Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog. The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing from Hubspot professes to cover all the basics from keyword strategies and optimization to blogs, mobile and the all-important conversion of traffic into leads. The 7 Habits of Effective Personal Fundraisers from CauseVox distills the success factors that many fundraising professionals exhibit in common. Each download requires a registration, which will put you on a company mailing list, but the material is probably worth that price.

To all my procrastinating friends and readers: You can stop kicking yourself about missing my wonderful workshop last week on “Making Your Messages Matter to Multiple Audiences.”  In response to icy conditions, the workshop is opening two weeks late. So yes! you have a second chance! The rescheduled workshop is now happening (weather permitting) Tuesday, February 15, 9 a.m. to noon, at the Baltimore office of Maryland Nonprofits, 190 West Ostend Street, Suite 201. Registration fee is $50 for Maryland Nonprofit members, $100 for non-members.  Do sign up on the Maryland Nonprofits website, or call them at 410-727-6367.

An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that direct mail fundraising campaigns by the nation’s largest nonprofits are raising less money, losing more donors, and attracting few new supporters. One reason cited: people who grew up after World War II are less responsive to direct mail than their elders. Marc Sirkin at NP Marketing Blog offers some pungent commentary: Folks, the writing is on the wall and has been for a few years. How many more postage increases can you handle? How much more tolerance for the price of paper can you swallow? What happens when donors start asking you to stop killing trees because of how much paper you are using? Jeff Brooks at DonorPower Blog takes the contrarian position: Let’s get real: Direct Mail is not dead! It’s not even terribly sick. Both make good points, however, about the dangers of depending exclusively on direct mail for

An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that direct mail fundraising campaigns by the nation’s largest nonprofits are raising less money, losing more donors, and attracting few new supporters. One reason cited: people who grew up after World War II are less responsive to direct mail than their elders. Marc Sirkin at NP Marketing Blog offers some pungent commentary: Folks, the writing is on the wall and has been for a few years. How many more postage increases can you handle? How much more tolerance for the price of paper can you swallow? What happens when donors start asking you to stop killing trees because of how much paper you are using? Jeff Brooks at DonorPower Blog takes the contrarian position: Let’s get real: Direct Mail is not dead! It’s not even terribly sick. Both make good points, however, about the dangers of depending exclusively on direct mail for

An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that direct mail fundraising campaigns by the nation’s largest nonprofits are raising less money, losing more donors, and attracting few new supporters. One reason cited: people who grew up after World War II are less responsive to direct mail than their elders. Marc Sirkin at NP Marketing Blog offers some pungent commentary: Folks, the writing is on the wall and has been for a few years. How many more postage increases can you handle? How much more tolerance for the price of paper can you swallow? What happens when donors start asking you to stop killing trees because of how much paper you are using? Jeff Brooks at DonorPower Blog takes the contrarian position: Let’s get real: Direct Mail is not dead! It’s not even terribly sick. Both make good points, however, about the dangers of depending exclusively on direct mail for

When it comes to telling your story, one size does not fit all. What you want your clients/customers to hear is seldom the same thing you want potential donors to hear – and if it is, you surely don’t want to say it to both audiences in the same way. That’s why I cringe when I see newsletters that try to cover all constituencies in a single publication. Look at it this way: If one-third of the newsletter appeals to clients, one-third appeals to donors, and one-third appeals to partners, then everyone who gets the newsletter will find two-thirds of it irrelevant. It’s better to pick a target and direct all the newsletter content to that target alone. If the target is clients, then reach donors and partners separately with letters or e-newsletters that are focused, laser-like, on them and them alone.

When it comes to telling your story, one size does not fit all. What you want your clients/customers to hear is seldom the same thing you want potential donors to hear – and if it is, you surely don’t want to say it to both audiences in the same way. That’s why I cringe when I see newsletters that try to cover all constituencies in a single publication. Look at it this way: If one-third of the newsletter appeals to clients, one-third appeals to donors, and one-third appeals to partners, then everyone who gets the newsletter will find two-thirds of it irrelevant. It’s better to pick a target and direct all the newsletter content to that target alone. If the target is clients, then reach donors and partners separately with letters or e-newsletters that are focused, laser-like, on them and them alone.

When it comes to telling your story, one size does not fit all. What you want your clients/customers to hear is seldom the same thing you want potential donors to hear – and if it is, you surely don’t want to say it to both audiences in the same way. That’s why I cringe when I see newsletters that try to cover all constituencies in a single publication. Look at it this way: If one-third of the newsletter appeals to clients, one-third appeals to donors, and one-third appeals to partners, then everyone who gets the newsletter will find two-thirds of it irrelevant. It’s better to pick a target and direct all the newsletter content to that target alone. If the target is clients, then reach donors and partners separately with letters or e-newsletters that are focused, laser-like, on them and them alone.