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Today, May 15th is the international day of the family. This is the branding – name, strapline and logo – we developed for Ireland’s My Family Day campaign to celebrate the wonderful diversity of families of all shapes and sizes.

Technorati Tags: My Family Day, branding, logos, diversity, equality

Conor Byrne has a great new blog on fundraising. Finally, the beginnings of an Irish fundraising blogging community!

Technorati Tags: conor byrne, fundraising, blogs, ireland, charity

Our new campaign for the Alzheimer Society’s Tea Day has just gone live. There are over 50,000 people in Ireland with Alzheimer’s and the number is set to double within 20 years. If you’d like to help the people across the country caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s why not organise a Tea Day event on 1 May. You can register here.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, tea day, alzheimer’s society

Some seem to have cracked it, some have yet to figure it out…

MarriagEquality

Friends of the Earth Ireland and International

Unicef

Greenpeace International and their Light bulb campaign

LGBT Noise

Concern Worldwide

Technorati Tags: facebook, social networking, non-profit, charity

Via Mal Warwick.

Forum on Fundraising are running a series of webinars - live interactive 90 minute sessions - with some of the top practitioners in fundraising, including Mal Warwick, Bernard Ross and Kay Sprinkel Grace. Cost is $199 which is bit pricey, but it could be worth a punt as the only other place your likely to see these speakers are at the National Convention or the IFC, both of which cost a LOT more.

Technorati Tags: training, fundraising

Some interesting stuff we’ve been involved with or stumbled across:

MarriagEquality. The newly launched campaign for same sex marriage. Go and add your name to the campaign.

The Irish Left Review. A new online political magazine. From their manifesto:

…We have great hope for the Left, in its ability to prosper to the point that it can join with its allies throughout Europe to present itself to the Irish people as a viable governing force in its own right,

These hopes and beliefs have led us to create the Irish Left Review, an open space to which we invite progressives from all the traditions on this island – socialist, Green, republican, trade unionist, liberals and egalitarians – to contribute the new ideas and strategies that will unite us against the domination of the Right, make new friends and propel us to future victories…

A really nice way to raise a million quid online. Via Bryan Miller.

The Guardian Tech Weekly podcast has had a couple of interesting editions recently looking at philanthropy and google’s role in the US election.

Piaras Kelly has the details of this years Edelman Trust Barometer. NGOs come out top again.

Technorati Tags: marriage equality, irish left review, send a singer, politics, trust barometer, guardian tech weekly, fundraising, philanthropy, same sex marriage

If you want to see email fundraising at its most effective, it’s worth taking a look at how the Democratic Party candidates are using it. Your first step should be to sign up to both Barack and Hilary’s websites. You’ll need a US zip code, but I’m sure you can think of one.

Here’s a great example of good email fundraising from Obama:

What does it do right?

1. Timing - it arrived the day after Super Tuesday

2. Subject line - this is possibly the most important collection of words you will right in an email. Here we have the intriguing ‘Startling News’

3. Clear articulation of need - the Clinton’s have pumped in $5 million of their own money into the campaign so we need your help to keep up.

But there’s still a long way to go before Barack becomes the Democratic nominee. In the next week alone, six more states will hold their primaries and caucuses.

We need to match this $5 million personal contribution from the Clintons immediately and put these resources to work in the states that will vote next.

4. Casual, conversational style - It opens ‘I was writing a note to you about the state of the race after Super Tuesday when we got some startling news.’ You would almost believe he was sitting at his computer when an aide ran in to tell him about the Clinton move - maybe he was.

5. Clear target - We need $5 million now – and a tracker showing how much Obama supporters have raised since Tuesday.

6. A large dollop of inspiration - have a read of these lines:

We have gotten to this point thanks to an unprecedented outpouring of support from ordinary Americans.

To date, more than 650,000 people like you have taken ownership of this campaign, giving whatever they can afford.

We’re going to do it the right way, with small donations from people like you.

We won yesterday because thousands upon thousands of individual supporters canvassed their neighborhoods, talked to their neighbors and friends, and made phone calls to remind their fellow supporters to get out the vote.

And we accomplished all of this with a campaign funded by ordinary people giving only what they can afford.

Yesterday was proof that America is ready for change — and that you are the force to make that change happen.

7. Specific ask - ‘It’s never been more urgent that you make a donation of $25 right now’

This is email fundraising at it’s peak. Go learn from the masters.

Technorati Tags: email, barack obama, hillary clinton, fundraising

We’re going all new media here for the next while, thanks to a day’s inspiration from the Institute of Fundraising’s New Media Conference in Edinburgh on Tuesday (we go so you don’t have to). So to kick off, here’s 5 tips we picked up for better new media fundraising.

1. The best way to use SMS is ‘capture and convert’.
Forget premium services - half the money is going to the network and service providers - and use capture and callback instead. Encourage people to send a text - a message of support, a text petition, whatever - and then call them back and ask them if they’ll consider a gift, or better still a direct debit.

2. Monitor social networks to see what people are saying about you
You may not have a strategy to use youtube, facebook, myspace or flickr for your organisation. But in these days of user-generated content, chances are someone you’ve never heard is. Maybe someone has set up a facebook group to support your organisation? Or is making videos about your issue? Or filling flickr with photos of your service users?

If you discover this is the case, don’t think of it as a threat. Here’s a group of people who are interested and motivated enough to do something for your organisation off their own bat. Encourage them.

3. Use automatic response emails to build your list
When you email info at Wood Green Animal Shelters you get an automatic response that says your enquiry will be dealt with shortly by the relevant member of staff. But in the meantime, would you like to sign up to our free email newsletter.

4. Apply for a google grant
Get your nonprofit started in search engine advertising by applying for a google grant and explore the world of AdWords.

5. Get a geek to write a facebook app for you
NSPCC developed Santa’s Little Helpers, a facebook app that lets users make photos of themselves into elves to help promote their Christmas campaign. Looking at all the associated groups it seems they got over 17,000 people involved.

Technorati Tags: new media, fundraising, sms, email, eMarketing, facebook

Well, if the leaks are to be believed, we’ve been longlisted for Best Specialist and Best Business Blog. So thank you very much for going to the trouble of nominating us.

Now, seems as it’s nearly February, I suppose we better get blogging again.

Technorati Tags: irish blog awards