Award-Winning Blog


Where should your next nonprofit marketing dollar go?

There are sophisticated models, used mostly by bigger players in the commercial space ,to answer this question based on the ROI of different channels and medium. These marketing mix models determine, statistically, the sales impact of various marketing activities by using sales revenue (or volume) as the dependent variable and the various marketing efforts/programs as […]

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He Had Leathery Hands

Or should it be: “He had strong hands”? Here’s one for the copywriters and wordsmiths in our audience. In a NY Times article, Your Brain on Fiction, Annie Murphy Paul (author of Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives) writes about neuroscience research on how word  imagery affects our […]

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The Perfect Thank You

If I might please interrupt your reading of “What to learn from the Kony video” articles for a few moments … For a fundraising lesson. Here, from Charity:Water, is a terrific example of the way ‘Thank You” needs to be expressed to your donors. Click the screen shot (or here) to view the video and […]

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Birds Of A Feather & Oprah

Here’s some interesting survey data from Pew Research regarding politics and users of social network sites (SNS). Some 18% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because that person posts too much about politics, or has different or offensive views, or because they thought their other friends would disagree or be offended, etc. […]

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Rule Brittanica

With no little sadness and a dash of nostalgia I read yesterday’s announcement that the print edition of  the Encyclopedia Britannica is going out of business. The 244 year-old, 120 pound paper behemoth that adorned bookshelves by the yard and sold for around $1250 will now be replaced by a $70 a year online edition […]

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How to measure nonprofit brand value

If I show you two identical buses, except one is blue and the other is red, and ask you to choose your favorite I can assume that choice is driven by color preference. Now imagine two direct mail pieces, identical in every way except the organization doing the soliciting.  Any preference (as opposed to no […]

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