Fundraising Success has just finished a four-part series, distilled from a session at the 2012 Washington Nonprofit Conference, presenting 20 fundraising ideas considered valuable and usable for small nonprofits.

You need to work your way through four links if you want to review all twenty and the discussion and concrete examples illustrating them — here (1-5), here (6-10), here (11-15), and here (16-20).

Worth the trip, although I thought some of this advice was off the mark … like a recommendation to experiment with premiums. I know I should in principle never advise against testing, but there are quite a few things I would test before premiums if I were a small nonprofit.

So, of the twenty ideas here are my picks …

#2. Gang printing of fundraising materials. Very practical.

#3. Personalize strategically. It does take effort to capture and use donor information well. There’s a great example here of how the Lincoln Center (not exactly a small nonprofit, but the point holds) focused on using personalization in their email renewals … yielding a 48% increase in gifts. Actually, a number of the recommendations in the twenty basically involve use of donor data. The key point … you’re never to small to benefit handsomely from smart use of donor data.

#8. Downscale. Learn from the big guys with established fundraising success (especially, but not exclusively, those in your sector, I would add). You can assume they’ve done a lot of testing and analytics to hone their tactics. But you can’t just copy blindly. Test to see if the tactic works for your nonprofit.

#10. Experiment with email testing. Again, I can’t say No to testing. And it’s certainly cheaper online than in the mail. But a lot of small groups have very small email lists.

#12. Don’t underestimate reinstatement. Very important. The smaller you are, the harder you probably worked to get that donor initially. Part company very reluctantly!

#14. Consider a sustainer program. If you’re small, you might have a real advantage in intimacy with your donors. And often sustaining donors are those who believe just as much in the organization (its people, its style, it’s unique need to exist) as the cause itself.

#17. Get supporters involved. Again, small might be an advantage when it comes to meaningful donor involvement. The maxim is: Ask for money and get advice; ask for advice and get money.

Nice job Fundraising Success.

Tom