Creative Staffing Resources Website

The design for the website for this recruiting firm takes its cues from the classified advertising section of the newspaper. With a bold black type over a white background, suitable to the blue collar jobs represented, highlighted type in yellow as the only color aids in navigation and creates a clean and distinctive look.

Interior Page

Creative Staffing Resources Interior Page

LINKS

Red Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites and marketing campaigns for businesses and nonprofits to increase visibility, and sales and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.

Combinatorics Capital Website

Website for a financial services firm.

Links

Red Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites, and marketing campaigns for businesses and nonprofits to increase visibility, awareness, and sales. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.

Award-Winning Promotional Campaign for a Fundraising Event

CLIENT: Jewish Community Center, Deal, NJ

Using the Safari theme, we created materials that attracted attention and increased attendance for this organization’s annual fundraising auction. The campaign consisted of a postcard, invitation, poster and auction program guide.

Each item in the campaign featured a different animal with a different pattern. The type was designed to look like it was stenciled on crates, and the items were printed on a recycled craft stock. The award-winning campaign resulted in the JCC’s most successful fundraising event to date.

American Graphic Design Award

  • Published in the book Direct Response
  • Published in the book Postcard Graphics

Links

A Nonprofit Sector-Wide Conference Can Bring Needed Clout

Dan Pallotta calls for TED-like, sector-wide conference for the nonprofit and philanthropic worlds asserting that it will be a perfect vehicle for massive change. I couldn’t agree more. And understanding the reticence of nonprofits to see themselves as a sector, I want to add that another benefit of bringing together the various appendages of the philanthropic world is to generate much needed clout for the nonprofit sector in gaining the goodwill of Congress and the various oversight agencies.Continue reading

Top Jewish Charities

2008 list of the largest Jewish nonprofits from The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of the top 400 charities.

40. Jewish Federations of North America: $398,400,000
55. Jewish Communal Funds (New York): $299,300,000
71. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee: $244,700,000
108. Yeshiva University: $182,880,000
111. United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York: $177,500,000
132. Jewish Federation/Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago: $157,300,000
181. Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties: $120,000,000
197. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston: $107,600,000
239. Brandeis University: $89,400,000
241. Jewish Community Foundation (Los Angeles): $89,000,000
246. Birthright Israel Foundation: $87,600,000
253. Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America: $85,620,000
274. United Jewish Foundation and Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit: $79,200,000
276. United Jewish Communities of MetroWest: $78,800,000
286. American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science: $75,370,000
293. P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds: $73,900,000
308. Anti-Defamation League: $68,250,000
312. American Society for Technion-Israel Institute of Technology: $67,800,000
317. Jewish Community Foundation for San Diego: $67,000,000
346. Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland: $58,590,000
349. Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles: $57,930,000
355. The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore: $56,350,000
361. Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS: $55,290,000

The State of Jewish Charities 2008

JTA NEWS

More than 20 Jewish charities were featured on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400, despite some serious drops in fundraising.

The annual ranking of top money-collecting nonprofits looked at charitable collections for 2008, a year in which many charities felt the pain of the recession and the early fallout from Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

The Jewish charities included on the list each took in more than $55 million, but they also saw some of the biggest individual drops in donations.

Major Organizations

The country’s largest Jewish charity, the Jewish Federations of North America took in $398.5 million but its donations fell by 25.3 percent. The tally for the umbrella organization of the Jewish federation system consists of money that passes through from local federations to the system’s overseas arms, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Israel, as well as federations’ dues to the national group, money from special campaigns and an annual grant the system receives from the U.S. government.

The Jewish Communal Fund of New York, a donor-advised fund that relies heavily on patrons who work in the financial services industry, saw a 26.9 percent drop. The Jewish federations in San Francisco and New York saw 28.8 and 21.3 percent falloffs, respectively.

And Hadassah, though its officials have worked hard to avoid being hurt by the fallout from the Madoff scandal, saw its donations drop by nearly half, to just over $85 million in 2008.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest gainers on the list was the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, which saw its contributions grow 71.4 percent to $78.8 million. MetroWest and the Birthright Israel Foundation, which took in $87.5 million in 2008, were new to the list.

The American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia dropped from last year’s list.

Federations

The top-ranking federation on the Chronicle’s list was New York’s, which despite its drop in support finished No. 111 with $177.5 million. In addition to New York and MetroWest, seven other local federations made the list: Chicago (132), San Francisco (181), Boston (197), Detroit (274), Cleveland (346), Los Angeles (349) and Baltimore (355). Communal funds in Los Angeles (241) and San Diego (317) made the list, in addition to New York’s (55).

Universities

Yeshiva University (108) and Brandeis University (239) made the list, in addition to the U.S.-based fund-raising arm of the Weizman Institute of Science (286). Several national organizations also finished in the top 400.

In all, according to the Chronicle, donations to the country’s largest charities grew by 1 percent last year. But many of the organizations listed closed their fiscal years in June or September, before the recession truly took hold. The Chronicle expects the 1 percent increase to drop precipitously in 2009, and perhaps further in 2010.

Looking to promote your organization?

Red Rooster Group has worked with the who’s who of the Jewish world.

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10 Ways of Expressing Your Nonprofit Brand

Here are 10 ways that you can use to express your brand. These concepts are taken from a seminar I conducted on business and nonprofit branding at the Brooklyn Creative League.

1.  Through a celebrity, personality or spokesperson that embodies your vision. Jimmy Carter has been bringing credence and visibility to Habitat for Humanity since 1984.

2.  Through a tagline that inspires people to action. United Negro College Fund’s slogan was created in 1972 and has since become of the most famous taglines of all brands in the business and nonprofit sectors.

3. Through a consistent drumbeat of advertising that conveys your message in a memorable way. The Energizer Bunny has been racking up sales since 1989 through print and broadcast ads that have become iconic.

4. Through dramatic images that evoke human emotion. Save the Children, Feed the Children and other relief organizations have used images of starving children to stir the heart and appeal to human conscience, compassion and guilt to such an extent that these images have lost some of their effect.

5. Through a consistent use of color and symbol that becomes linked to your cause. Susan G. Komen for the Cure put breast cancer research on the map through their walks involving thousands, and have co-opted the color pink and the pink ribbon to symbolize breast cancer.

6. Through innovation that drives demand for your products or services. Apple consistently sets new standards with breakthroughs in the personal computers, portable music, and phones, as well as new methods that buck the industry, such as charging for individual song downloads.

7. Through a new business model that focuses on customer needs. The Doe Fund took homeless people off the street, trained them for a job and created an enterprise that generates revenue – solving social problems with a profit.

8. By being first with an idea to become a leader in your sector. Toyota launched the Prius in 1997, making it the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle and became a leader in both sales and caché.

9. Through a character that makes a serious message palatable. Smokey Bear’s message, “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires,” was created in 1944 and has become engrained in our national conscience.

10. Through dramatic action that captures the attention of the media. Greenpeace’s precision focus on a key message delivered dramatically (not always legally) at the right time and place has been a winning formula for keeping the pressure on decision-makers.

WAKE UP CALL: How many of these techniques are  you using to convey your nonprofit brand?

Major Nonprofits Now Collect Donations through Amazon.com

Amazon.com Customers Can Now Donate to Major Non-Profit Organizations Using Their Amazon Accounts
Major nonprofits are getting in front of millions of potential donors through Amazon’s Holiday Giving Program. Organizations such as American Red Cross, UNICEF, Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Feeding America, Heifer International, Autism Society of America, International Federation for Animal Welfare, Children`s Miracle Network and United Way of King County now allow Amazon customers to make donations quickly and securely using information from their Amazon.com account. Customers can visit www.amazon.com/holidaygiving from now through January 10, 2009.
Hopefully, this will provide a boost to these nonprofits and also increase the visibility of charities in general among the public, particularly during the holiday giving season. Nine nonprofits are featured on the main Holiday Giving page. However, the link to “See more charities” leads to a page that is cluttered with combined logos of businesses and charities under the misleading heading of Featured Merchants, sending a confusing message that undermines the propensity for people to donate to these charities.
WAKE UP CALL: The takeway for smaller nonprofits is to learn from the larger ones in finding ways through partnerships to increase your visibility to people who may not heard of you, and to do so in a venue where people have their wallets open. Just make sure that the site or venue is not competing against you or channeling prospective donors away from your cause.
Read the full story here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS63474+21-Oct-2009+BW20091021
Amazon.com Holiday Giving Program
http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=2224407011

Major nonprofits are getting in front of millions of potential donors through Amazon’s Holiday Giving Program. Organizations such as American Red Cross, UNICEF, Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Feeding America, Heifer International, Autism Society of America, International Federation for Animal Welfare, Children’s Miracle Network and United Way of King County now allow Amazon customers to make donations quickly and securely using information from their Amazon.com account. Customers can visit www.amazon.com/holidaygiving from now through January 10, 2009.

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Attributes of a Successful Nonprofit

Financial information does relate in any way to an organization’s effectiveness. This type of guide based solely on financials is a disservice to donors as well as to the entire nonprofit sector by perpetuating the notion that nonprofits are better if they spend less on overhead.
Financials have no relation whatsoever on the type of problem the organization is attempting to solve and their effectiveness in doing so. Many organizations spend little on fundraising (they rely on diminishing government grants – not a great strategy) and have no clue how to eliminate the cause of the social problem that they are addressing, and indeed will never actually do so. They have simply institutionalized a method of serving a specific population.
Furthermore, studies have shown that with no standard method for reporting various administrative and fundraising expenses, nonprofits consistently mis-report them. In fact, guides like this actively encourage under-reporting of expenses so that nonprofits look good comparatively to other groups. This vicious cycle must end.
In a time when we need more transparency and education about what it actually costs to operate a nonprofit to successfully address social problems, and at a time when nonprofits face more competition and threats to their funding than ever, we need to support novel ideas for addressing the root cause of problems.
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If you want to create a guide that actually helps donors to find organizations that are effective, consider measuring the following:
IMPACT: Is the organization just applying band-aids to a situation or is it actually addressing the root cause of the problem? Is it affecting the attitudes and behaviors of its constituents in the communities it is addressing to positively affect change?
RELEVANCE: Is the organization stuck in yesterday’s mode addressing past issues that are no loner needed (like refugee settlement for specific populations) or is it addressing the needs of people today? Is the organization culturally-competent and using relevant tools and technology to address current challenges?
INNOVATION: Are new ideas and risk-taking discouraged or does the organization have the capacity to be creative, inventive and pioneering in responding to the changing needs of our society and the world around it?
LEVERGAGE: Is the organization merely helping one person at a time or does it have a model that allows it to leverage funds or resources to help exponential people with the same money?
REPLICATION: Is the organization just serving a single population or can the organization’s model be replicated by others to eliminate similar problems in other communities?
ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS: Is the organization just getting by or does it have sound policies and practices in place? Is it investing in marketing and infrastructure that will allow it to grow?
LIFECYCLE ADAPATION: Is the organization addressing its life cycle stage effectively? For example, are early stage organizations building their boards and donors base? Do mature organizations have infrastructure, leadership training and succession planning in place?
COLLABORATION: Does the organization try to protect its turf and “go it alone” or does it work with other organizations to solve problems and serve their populations?
ADVOCACY: Does the organization shy away from trying to change policies that affect their populations or does it combine advocacy with direct service, as studies have shown is the most successful way to create change.
STRONG LEADERSHIP: Has the same person been applying an outdated philosophy for the past decade or is there someone at the helm who brings character, vision and guidance?
ORGANIZATIONAL AUTHORITY: Does it just get by on a formula for providing nondescript services or has it pioneered breakthroughs that are adopted by other organizations? Has the organization established a reputation for being a leader in it field?
It would be wonderful to have a guide that recognizes the nonprofits that are creating real change based on these factors. Our society looks to nonprofits for leadership in addressing our pressing issues. Set the bar and expect great results – our society depends upon it.

In this post, I pick up from How Much is This Dollar Worth which argues that low spending on overhead is not the way to measure the worthiness of a nonprofit. Instead, I suggest the following criteria for donors to use in evaluating a nonprofit organization.Continue reading