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Hi everyone We're considering offering specific projects for in mem gifts. Has anyone got any evidence to suggest that this would increase the amounts given?

Jumpstart, a national early education non-­profit organization, announced this week that actress and star of USA’s White Collar, Tiffani Thiessen, is the official celebrity ambassador of the 2013 Read for the Record campaign.

As ambassador, Thiessen will support the campaign by bringing awareness to the early childhood education crisis in America and Jumpstart’s solution to this critical issue by preparing children living in low-­income communities to enter kindergarten with the skills they need to succeed.

Jumpstart’s Read for the Record, presented in partnership with the Pearson Foundation, is the one day of the year when millions of individuals come together to celebrate literacy by breaking the world record for reading the same book on the same day. On October 3, adults and children across the country will read Otis, by Loren Long in support of the campaign.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10207-tiffani-thiessen-named-as-jumpstart-ambassador

Last week the New York Times published a shocking op-ed penned by actor and activist Angelina Jolie, titled “My Medical Choice”.

In it, Jolie announced that in April she had a double mastectomy even though she did not have breast cancer. The operation was preventative.

Jolie lost her mother at age 56 from the disease, and Jolie herself carries the BRCA1 gene, a mutation of the BRCA gene, which she says increases a woman’s chances of getting breast cancer by 65 percent. Jolie’s doctors estimated her risk at 87 percent, and at 50 percent for ovarian cancer, which is also affected by the mutated gene.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10212-angelina-jolie-shares-her-preventive-surgery-decision

Legendary singer and songwriter, Roberta Flack, will entertain guests at the Education Africa Achievement Awards for Africa gala on Monday, June 3, 2013, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City.

The Grammy Award winning Flack, who is best known for a string of hits like Killing Me Softly With His Song, Set the Night to Music and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face will give a special live performance at the event which will honor four distinguished individuals – Professor Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the University of the Free State; Geoff Rothschild, Head of Government and International Affairs (and former chairman) of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange; Ndaba Ntsele, CEO of Pamodzi Investment Holdings; Teresa Clarke, Founder & CEO of Africa.com and co-founder of Student Sponsorship Program – who will be recognized for their work and achievements in championing education in South Africa.

James Urdang, Education Africa’s executive director, said: “We are thrilled to have Roberta Flack perform at the awards dinner. I think it’s amazing that such an outstanding performer is doing this pro bono for charity. Her performance on our stage will not only be exciting for the guests, but also for the Aqua Vista Marimba Band, which is made up of young students from a school in East London in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, who will also be performing at the event.”

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10200-roberta-flack-to-sing-at-education-africa-achievement-awards

I really like the concept - a virtual continental grave which feature photographs of the dear departed. Presumably when there are multiple departed friends

It does yes, and video. And you can set it to turn on at 9 and off at 5 . The joys of technology! Best Claire From: Legacymarketing@...

Does that come with sound? From: Legacymarketing@... [mailto:Legacymarketing@...] On Behalf Of Claire Routley Sent: 21 May 2013

I think that is lovely Claire, really lovely. ________________________________ From: Legacymarketing@... [Legacymarketing@...] on

Matt, books are soooo twentieth-century :) We have a shiny new digital photo frame with a picture of the legator along with their favourite Bible verse... A

CrowdingIn has been written to help charities find suitable crowdfunding websites and includes a filtering system, says Liam Collins, a policy adviser at Nesta

Hello all Please find attached details of a vacancy with Alzheimer's Society... Best Claire ________________________________ Alzheimer's Society is a charity

Charities and communites must think about what they need from local businesses before asking them for support

From Cancer Research UK and Tesco to Save the Children and GlaxoSmithKline, there are lots of well-known partnerships between charities and some of the biggest corporates in the country.

However, there are also an increasing number of successful partnerships evolving between charities and community groups and local, smaller businesses. Jan Levy, managing director at Three Hands, which helps link businesses and community organisations, says there are a number of reasons that small companies are becoming increasingly interested in engaging with charities. He says often it is driven by the personal interests of the staff or chief executive at the company, rather than being purely strategic.

"Another big reason is if they are providers to large companies they are often asked what they are doing towards corporate social responsibility," he says. "It could help them to get more business and also not lose business."

How can charities go about finding these small companies to link with, and, when they do, how can they build a beneficial relationship?

Identifying small businesses to partner with can be quite hard, says Levy, but he says that one effective way to do so is through an intermediary such as a chamber of commerce or a business connector. "I think smaller charities have

to be determined to see and be seen," he says. "Make sure you are visible and building a profile."

Once one is identified, it is important that charities know what they want from the business. "There's always this tension between having a simple menu of opportunities and the scope for a tailored relationship," Levy says. "From the beginning, if charities are clear about what a business could do, that is very helpful. For some charities, that can be quite hard to put together."

Graham Willmington, chief executive of Community Matters, agrees that it is important that charities and communities think carefully about what they need from local businesses before asking them for support. "If you're going to encourage a local business to help your charity, think about what you could usefully ask them to do," he says. "There needs to be a proper dialogue between the two to ensure that what's being offered by the business is what is needed."

Sometimes these dialogues are helped along by an intermediary. One such organisation is City Action, a volunteering brokerage programme linking City-based businesses with community organisations, run by City of London Corporation. Noa Burger, corporate responsibility project manager, says the broker can act as a "translator" between the two sectors. "If you have access to a broker, it definitely helps," she says. "You don't have to cold call. We're already working with businesses that are open to the idea."

She says that, once a relationship has been brokered, communication is key, and charities should be creative in how they keep a business interested in the partnership. "The worst thing is when momentum is lost," she says.

"Businesses are used to having emails responded to within 24 hours. If you can't do that, be upfront about it and explain why and how quickly you will be able to get back to them."

Good communication with corporate partners has been vital to the small arts education charity CraftSpace in its long-term relationships with local businesses, according to its director, Deirdre Figueiredo.

She says it is important that staff from local companies they have partnered with continue to visit the project as the partnership progresses. "Where they remain remote and don't see some of the outcomes it's hard to keep them engaged," she says.

She also says that getting beneficiaries to share their stories directly with corporates can help. "When we do that well, that's when the business stays engaged," she says. "That's when they are on the phone to me the next day saying, 'That was fantastic. What can we do next?'"

One of the charity's most successful partnerships has been with the local sewing machine company VSM: the relationship began in 2006 and is still working today. Figueiredo says this relationship came about through an introduction from an artist who had worked with the company. "We made an appointment with the managing director and didn't go with a package. It was an open conversation to find out what we were both interested in and if we shared any objectives," she says.

She says it is important not to be too prescriptive about what the partnership should entail, but instead have an open conversation. "Businesses like the fact that we can be very flexible," she says. "It helps if there's a mutual benefit.

"It's never a one-way thing. It's been about negotiating a relationship and finding out how we can meet their objectives and how they can meet ours."

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A quick Google search for “converting donors” turns up all kinds of sage and not so sage advice on how to do it.

But ‘conversion’ is a mis-used term tossed around with far too much abandon and far too little real understanding.

The result? Tons of false and unrealizable expectations and far, far too much wasted money on efforts that should never be thought of as ‘conversion’ in the first place.

Why am I about to climb on this soapbox?

At last week’s Engage Conference presented by Fundraising Success (you can see the presentations here), my colleague Kevin Schulman and I were both struck by an observation made in the wrap-up session by Tom Harrison, the CEO of Russ Reid.

“Why are nonprofits mad at about 50% of their donors at any given time for donating in the “wrong” way? And why do they persist in attempting to convert them to behaving differently?”

Apparently — and fortunately — Kevin wrestled with these questions long after the conference ended. His musings resulted in Stop Trying to Convert Donors  – a piece that appears in the current issue of The DonorVoice Newsletter.

I urge you to read the article in its entirety. Kevin asks and answers the question: “So what gives with all the effort time and wasted trying to convert donors who give in one way, even predictably so, to another way?”

Here are the key takeaways:

• Unlike sophisticated commercial marketers, the nonprofit sector treats ‘conversion’ as a process that takes a new donor with at least some small relationship and connection to the organization and then systematically destroys it by barraging the donor with inordinate amounts of direct mail. (Kevin doesn’t put it this gently.)

• “If the same energy, resources and time were put into building legitimate product extensions and upgrades — a mainstay in the commercial sector — then the nonprofit sector and the causes supported by it would be immensely better off.”

Kevin goes on to cite what he calls “a few classic examples of the folly of conversion”, assuming the goal is net income and lifetime value.

Converting Event to Mission Donors

Too many nonprofits waste too much time and money trying to convert event donors to ‘mission’ donors — a fool’s errand. The goal of ‘conversion’ because someone in the organization has decided to make everybody a direct mail donor is misguided at best.

Converting Premium to Non-Premium Donors

The false assumption here is that premium donors are not real donors. Why feel compelled to convert them? Why not use better products and more products and the pricing value curves assigned by donors to these products to increase margin and lifetime value?

Converting Disaster Donors to Mission Donors

It’s assumed in the US (but not in the UK) that disaster donors don’t convert well to longer-term higher value donors. The main reason the conversion process doesn’t work well in the US is because it’s not properly executed. According to Kevin: “What will be tried with reckless abandon in spite of repeatedly lousy results is putting these same disaster donors into the direct mail stream to ‘convert’ them.”

I’m sure Kevin’s insights will get some blood boiling, but they’ll also sharpen your thinking.

Care to share your conversion experiences?

Roger

P.S. Kevin argues that the reason so many organizations fail at conversion is they don’t realize “the truer reality that they have, almost in spite of themselves, different lines of business and product lines. Instead of cross-selling and upselling on these products too many fundraisers attempt to merge and blend the various lines of their business into a mythical donor pyramid that is built and defined by response to direct mail.”

As one reader, Charlie Hulme, Creative Director at Pell & Bales in the UK, puts it: “Great article — makes total sense. Why do we insist on forcing people into a model they haven’t shown interest in when there’s another (very lucrative) one that they have?

“It’s the equivalent of a big supermarket viewing my purchasing history, seeing I’m a vegan, but deciding they get a better return on steak and so constantly try to sell me that instead of the food I want!”

 

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Judah Phillips (Author)
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The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly
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