Logo for a financial firm.
Secrets of a Successful Marketing Campaign
Red Rooster Group shares how their targeted direct mail campaign to Jewish Community Centers is achieving impressive results.
As the Principal of Red Rooster Group, I am committed to growing our business and instituted a marketing campaign that kicked off at the end of last year. While we are still in the early stages of the campaign, it is pulling a good response so far, and so I wanted to share it with you in the hopes of inspiring your marketing efforts this year.
Nonprofit Naming Considerations
The name of your organization can say a lot about who you are, what you do, your values and your audience. While a great name won’t guarantee a steady of stream of funds, it can help distinguish your organization in this increasingly competitive world.
Continue readingBRANDING: The Allure of Logos
The logo is caught in a strange land, somewhere between the mark of a proud craftsman, and our post-modern notion of the brand as the fulfillment of a promise. Like a poem, that can encapsulate an amalgam of image, emotion and metaphor, the logo embodies a dream-like notion between what is and what can be.
TRENDS: Free Technology Provides Lessons in Cultural Competency
In the recent issue of Good magazine, Iqbal Quadir, the founder of Grameenphone, and Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of One Laptop per Child, debate the merits of these specific technologies in the developing world.Continue reading
IDEAS: Reaching Beyond Your Base
This reader comment on a New York Times article about electric cars caught my attention:
“Just get NASCAR to change its rules to only allow electric powered cars to race and see how quickly the technology becomes not only affordable, but mainstream as well…”
WAKE-UP CALL: The thought highlights the need for nonprofits to think beyond their traditional base, and to forge partnerships with groups that are on the opposite side of the spectrum in order to create large-scale change.
FUNDRAISING: Lessons from a Charity
Amidst all the recent financial gloom and doom, I thought it’s worthwhile to report a blip of good news on the fundraising front and relate the lessons that can be learned from it. The New York Times reported today that its Neediest Cases Fund has increased its contributions significantly over last year. The number of donors has jumped 53% from 2,955 to 4,518, and the fund is $500,000 ahead of where it was this time last year (a total of $3.7 million was raised so far). Apparently the heightened awareness of the needs of those living in poverty has touched the middle class, despite their own financial concerns.
FUNDRAISING: Lift the Limits on Low Overhead Ratios
This entry is in response to an op ed piece by Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times on December 24, 2008: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds.
Easing our insistence on low overhead ratios for charities, will help them to co-opt the profit motive. One reason that nonprofits are not as effective with their own in fundraising is not specifically the profit motive, but the fact that the public insists on nonprofits maintaining low overhead ratios (such as 85%). On the face of it, it makes sense that donors don’t want to see their money spent on administration or fundraising costs – they want it to go directly into programs.
EARNED INCOME: Encourage Triple Bottom Line for Nonprofits
This entry is in response to an op ed piece by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on December 24, 2008: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
A new concept in business is the Triple Bottom Line: Profit, People, and the Planet. By paying attention to all of these elements, we create more responsible corporations, and in turn, a more responsible society. Just as businesses are expanding their outlook from merely profit to include social and environmental responsibility, it is time that we allowed nonprofits to expand their focus as well to incorporate a bit of the profit motive.
Earned income ventures is the name that nonprofits are giving to their business pursuits, allowing them to derive revenue from sources other than purely altruistic donations. This trend is on the rise and is here to stay, so let’s embrace it and allow nonprofits to take advantage of the market forces that have rewarded those in the private sector.
WAKE UP CALL: To what extent does your nonprofit take advantage of market forces to achieve its mission?
BEST PRACTICES: Habits of High Impact Nonprofits
In their book, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather MacLeod Grant describe the key practices they uncovered in studying a cross section of nonprofits that achieve large-scale results. Their key findings:Continue reading
TRENDS: The Growing Senior Sector
The population is aging at a rate faster than anyone had anticipated. In less than three decades from now, the number of people globally under the ages of five years and those above the age of 65 will criss-cross. That means that there will be more elderly people around than younger ones. Projecting another 30 years forward and the number of elderly will double their younger cohorts.Continue reading
TRENDS: Measuring Program Evaluation
Lessons in Measuring the Success of Drug Rehabilitation Programs
The trend toward accountability in the nonprofit sector and the resulting need for performance evaluation is a problem facing the substance-abuse treatment sector, according to an article in The New York Times on Dec. 22, 2008. The article explores the concept that few rehabilitation programs have the evidence to show that they are effective. Continue reading