Award-Winning Blog


Think Locally, Act Locally

How do people think about and organize their giving?  Do people have a favorite charity or two for each sub-sector that matters to them?  The pie-chart of giving method? What about the stacked bar chart method where folks are single-issue oriented and give to 5-7 conservation charities, for example? I expect most readers would bet […]

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Digital Donor Abuse

With another batch of primary elections behind us and more still ahead…with the future of Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights hanging in the balance…with heartbreaking scourge of mass shootings at schools and shopping centers…there’s barely time to ponder the ultimate fate of life as we know it either by pandemic, famine, flood, locusts, or […]

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Calling all Copywriters

Your words matter.  Anybody saying people don’t read copy hasn’t done a copy test to prove they do.  Heck, we’ve done seemingly really minor copy tweaks and seen that matters.  Subject line testing anyone? All copywriters know the copy needs to be simple and relatable.  It should read like a personal letter or conversation. And […]

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Do The Opposite?

Some might say I’m contrarian.  Some might be right.  In keeping with what some people think, try this on… Charities need, More debt Less revenue diversification Less leanness (i.e., they need bigger reserves) Higher overhead This isn’t contrarian for the sake of it.  Consider that the opposite of what I’m prescribing is (more or less) […]

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Time for a Money Revolution in the Board Room

Conventional wisdom in nonprofit board rooms, as best as I can tell,  is that “in the midst of these uncertain political and economic times we should pull back”…”husband our resources”…”not be aggressive at a time like this”….and a thousand other cautionary excuses. Frankly, whether in good times or bad that’s usually the case because  the […]

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What Time is It?

Faces matter.  Humans know this, intuitively.  Babies process and understand faces at an almost adult level as early as four months. We automatically process expressions taking cues and altering our behaviors accordingly.   And of course we see faces all the time.  This almost constant exposure to faces makes us prefer inanimate objects that mimic faces.  […]

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