Aggregated External News

LookToTheStars.org was at the Super Saturday event in New York, benefiting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, in the weekend.

It was the time of the year again, when Southampton was taken over by people with big hearts and even bigger pockets. Nova’s Ark Project in Watermill, New York was the place to be on Saturday. The 16th annual Super Saturday hosted by Donna Karan and Kelly Ripa, presented by QVC and INSTYLE took place for the 16th year in a row!

This year, patrons enjoyed fresh pressed organic juices from BluePrint, water from VOSS and 80 degree weather. As of Monday morning, the event had raised $3.5 Million for the cause and they were still tallying numbers! Names such as Nicky Hilton, Susan Lucci, Sandra Lee, Joy Behar and Tiffani Thiessen all made their way to Southampton for the cause. International DJ Steve Porter was the man in charge of keep patrons entertained as he worked the DJ booth.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10558-exclusive-stars-come-out-for-super-saturday

Angelina Jolie addressed the United Nations University in Tokyo this week, encouraging students to support her Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative and take action against war zone rape.

’’Our world is scarred by immense problems from poverty to injustice and war. But your potential as young people is boundless," she said during a special screening of her film, In The Land Of Blood And Honey. "Problems that have defeated previous generations, you have the chance to overcome. ’This is a vast task and it needs every effort and every level, from government and the UN, to communities and families, down to you – but it is possible.

“The suffering the film depicts is immense and it is only one small piece of a global problem. Together we have the power to prevent these tragedies from being repeated. We cannot change the past but the future, that is an open question, and you have the power to find the answer.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10557-angelina-jolie-encourages-students-in-tokyo-to-take-action-against-war-zone-rape

Adverblog is a great resource and posted these three must reads which I thought I would share here, enjoy: we often work in uncharted territory and therefore spend much time thinking about the big question “What’s Next?”. Where and how do we spend our future creative efforts? For the benefit of brands, clients and agencies […]

Expert advice for ambitious fundraisers from the Institute of Fundraising's national convention

In the recent debate at the Institute of Fundraising's national convention, 'How do we attract, develop and retain the fundraising leaders of the future?' fundraisers got some top tips from experts on stepping up to a director of fundraising role.

Joe Jenkins - director of fundraising, Friends of the Earth

- "Start acting like a fundraising leader. You don't need the job title. Start to think in terms of the big picture for the organisation. Lift your gaze above day-to-day activities and the next year. Look at the long term.

- "Grab every opportunity to look beyond what you're already responsible for. Look outside and inside the organisation for richer, more diverse experience that you can offer in your current or next role. Inspire colleagues, eg., give presentations.

- "Make sure the job is what you really want. Some people are better at actually fundraising than leading a team and are more valuable in that role."

Chris Askew – CEO, Breakthrough Breast Cancer

- "As a CEO, I look for people who can connect across the whole organisation, those who can transpose. Directors of fundraising need to do this more than directors of service or finance or any other department."

- "Don't be defensive or territorial about your work. You need to open it up to the rest of the organisation. Good fundraising directors are the chief storytellers in an organisation."

"People are always rushing to manage. It sometimes puzzles me. Lots of 20-year-olds talk about aiming to be a manager. Management isn't something you want to rush into and it's not the only route to developing."

Catherine Cottrell – deputy executive director of Fundraising, Unicef UK

- "You should be thinking about what skills you need to grow, and also what your organisation should be doing to help you. Work with colleagues in other departments more. Look at getting mentoring or formal training. You want to be seen as someone who can lead the organisation in a crisis."

- "Strategic planning experience is essential, but hard to get. At Unicef, we have a strategic leadership group and we look at how we can get people across the organisation involved in decision making."

- "The long game is important. It's not just about the money you can bring in this year. You might have to make decisions which mean less money this year, but better outcomes in the long run. It can take a long time to train yourself to do that and to be seen to be thinking like that."

Claire Wood Hill – director of fundraising at The Children's Trust

- "Lots of fundraisers say they're not good at maths. You need to get better at it if you want to be a fundraising director. You need to be able to hold your own and answer any questions from the board on potentially multi-million pound projects. Skill up and get to know Excel very well."

- "As a director, it's not about you, it's about the best people in your team. You need to be able to challenge and motivate them. You should plant seeds of ideas but then enable and empower staff to take the reins."

- "Be careful to not become too divorced from fundraising on the ground. You need to keep your hand in but still maintain a helicopter view."

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here.

• Fundraising
• Voluntary sector
• Charities

Claudia Cahalane
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Giving USA, an annual publication that reports the sources and uses of charitable gifts in the United States, released some good news this year: Overall, charitable giving in 2012 was up 3.5% over 2011. This is especially good news for nonprofits that have a well-rounded plan to raise funds through multiple channels. But keep in mind that donations from individuals make up the largest piece of the giving pie: 72%.

Image credit: Whitney Bond/ Little Leopard Book

How is your organization’s “giving pie” sliced? Do you have a steady stream of individual gifts coming in the door every year?

There are two keys to getting more individual gifts online:

1. You must make it easy for donors to give.

Make giving a snap online: Giving online giving is growing faster than any other method of donating. But simply having the option to donate online isn’t enough: Donors expect online giving to be easy. A donor should be able to Google the name of your organization, click on your website, and find your donation button in 2 seconds or less. Is it easy for a newbie to give through your organization’s website? Try making it even easier.

Make it easier to say yes: People are more likely to give when the request comes from someone they know, especially if it’s a trusted peer. The key here is quantity. Social fundraising works best when an enthusiastic team works together to rally their networks to raise a large sum of money. Introduce a few outgoing, social, creative volunteers to a peer-to-peer fundraising tool like Crowdrise and see how you can use the power of peer networks to introduce new donors to your cause.

2. You have to meet donors where they are.

On social media: People are talking about your cause on social media. Is your organization part of the discussion? Reach out to your advocates and encourage the conversation. Consider recruiting new donors on social media and make it easy for current donors to share your message with the world.

Via mobile: Fifty-six percent of adults in the United States own a smartphone. Do you know what your organization’s website or emails look like on a smart phone? To keep up with your donors’ habits, you absolutely have to give them a good experience via mobile. For more on mobile giving, download Network for Good’s free eGuide.

 

Analytics experts joined forces with charities and public bodies over the weekend in a 'Data Dive', the first of its kind in the UK
• More from our series on big data

Read about how the participating organisations got on:
• Oxfam
• Hampshire County Council
• CVAT
• HelpAge International

Professional data scientists and corporate analysts are collaborating with charities and public bodies to identify and combat social problems in the UK and worldwide, as part of a new series of projects launched by DataKind UK.

Over 50 volunteers from some of Britain's largest businesses spent the weekend working side-by-side with staff from Oxfam, HelpAge International, Hampshire County Council and Community and Voluntary Action Tameside (CVAT) at the UK's first 'Data Dive'.

Analytics experts from Marks & Spencer, Ocado, Sky and Ordnance Survey joined academics and financial analysts, all of whom were taking part in a personal capacity.

"The variety of organisations taking part and the variety of problems they bring adds a lot to the event", said Duncan Ross, founder of DataKind UK and director of data science at US technology firm Teradata.

"The volunteers got a lot out of this weekend because they were doing things they weren't necessarily familiar with, as opposed to simply taking the work they do professionally and applying it to the third sector", said Ross.

Analytics and complex algorithms are commonplace among most large businesses and governments today, and have been used in industries such as finance and bioscience for decades, but the third sector and local government often lack the resources to take advantage of these powerful tools.

DataKind - the overarching organisation of which DataKind UK is a chapter - aims to address this imbalance, creating opportunities for nonprofit organisations to take advantage of skillsets that would otherwise be far beyond their budgets.

"For charities large and small, that kind of expertise is just not affordable. This is the only way we can get access to such sophisticated analysis", said Ben Gilchrist, Policy and Participation Manager at CVAT.

The Data Dive follows similar events run by DataKind and will be the first of many over the coming months.

Jake Porway, founder and executive director of DataKind opened the event by setting out the organisation's broad aim of using data to serve humanity, before opening the floor to each of the charities taking part.

Oxfam - food prices

Oxfam came into the weekend aiming to look in detail at the problem of unstable global food prices, and how their unpredictability might be lessened through intelligent analysis of data.

"Oxfam were an interesting group because they got the largest number of volunteers and split it up into four subgroups, each looking something different like rainfall, oil prices and food prices", said Ross.

Analysts used a variety of tools for analysis and visualisation including R and D3, with outputs including a 12 month forecast of the price of white maize in Nairobi (see above) and a dashboard showing various observed food prices at different locations in Kenya (see below).

You can read more here about the process, participants and results in the Oxfam group.

Hampshire County Council - special educational needs

The team from Hampshire arrived aiming to develop a model for predicting the prevalence of children with special educational needs (SEN) at a hyper-local scale by combining data from diverse sources including public bodies and social media.

"Hampshire discovered that the data they currently have is perfect for reporting purposes, but not necessarily for predicting purposes. For example, the data they pulled in from Twitter is granular down to the millisecond, while SEN data is granular down to the year", said Ross.

While they didn't achieve their ultimate aim, the group were able to identify limitations in their data that would need to be overcome in order to carry out the level of analysis they were aiming for.

You can read more here about the group's process and participants, as well as the obstacles that were identified.

CVAT - patterns in charity funding

CVAT set out to explore how charity funding is distributed across charities of different sizes, financial vulnerabilities, and physical locations, using data for voluntary organisations in the Tameside area of Greater Manchester.

"CVAT had done a survey in Greater Manchester on the voluntary sector, but had lacked the resources to fully analyse it. The key question for them was how is the sector coping with the cuts agenda? This is particularly relevant given that a lot of smaller organisations get their funding almost exclusively from local government - an area of the public purse already under a lot of stress", said Ross.

The above interactive dashboard summarises their findings, including the fact that more funding goes to large bodies than those of any other size.

"The commitment of all the volunteers was incredible. The amount of effort they all put in, and the expertise they brought, was quite overwhelming at times. Ten people were working on our data over the course of the weekend, and the different questions they asked made me think a lot about we can do in the future with this", said Gilchrist.

You can find more details here about the CVAT group's work, including links to the datasets they used.

HelpAge International - elderly care across the world

The HelpAge group analysed data on care for the elderly, the results of which will be published later this year as part of an index of how different countries treat elderly people.

What next?

Ross now intends for participant analysts to form what he calls the Data Corps, which will provide ongoing support for interested charities beyond individual Data Dives.

"The Data Corps will work on longer term projects, which can either be standalone or can come directly out of a Data Dive. We hope some of the volunteers who came over this weekend will actually commit to working with them much longer term", he said.

The next Data Dive is slated for late autumn this year, and Ross plans to hold three or four per year in order to make full use of the 300 data scientists and analysts on the DataKind UK contact list.

Data Dives are one method, but how else can we bridge the gap between the analytical capabilities of corporations and the needs of the voluntary sector? Join the debate in the comments below, on the #datadive hashtag or by contacting me directly on Twitter @jburnmurdoch

• Big data
• Charities
• Voluntary sector
• Food poverty
• Autism
• Special educational needs
• Voluntary sector network blog

John Burn-Murdoch
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It’s not bad enough that every nonprofit you compete with for funds is badgering your donors with email appeals. Their appeals are just the tip of the iceberg. This remarkable infographic from ExactTarget shows you just how crowded those in-boxes will get over the balance of the year. According to ExactTarget, the average online retailer will send 17 promotional emails in July, 18 in August and September, 20 in October, 25 in November, 27 in December and 18 in January. That’s 125 before the year end’s. And that’s just one retailer! Here’s the environment you’re fishing in. The advice given

Charlize Theron and Executive Director of UNAIDS Michel Sidibé met with South African president Jacob Zuma on Monday to discuss the country’s efforts to fight HIV/AIDS.

Charlize Theron with Jacob Zuma and Michel Sidibe
Credit/Copyright: UNAIDS

Prominent issues in the discussions included the vulnerability of young women and girls to HIV in South Africa, the need for Africa to become more self-sufficient in producing antiretroviral medicines and the remarkable progress South Africa has made in responding to HIV recent years.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10556-charlize-theron-meets-with-south-african-president-to-discuss-hiv-aids

Anyone that completes a marathon deserves a huge pat on the back – I have attempted and failed twice. The training alone is a major commitment – add in a high fundraising target and it’s easy to see why some don’t make it to the start line.

If any of your supporters are about to run a marathon, they’re on course for a major personal achievement. But they’re also probably starting to feel a bit fed up of the training schedule and are running out of fundraising ideas – so now’s the perfect time to give them some encouragement and inspiration.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve been honoured to support marathon runners with their fundraising and be a recognised force for good. Here are our top tips for engaging and motivating them to run and fundraise as well as possible:

1. Fundraising online

People will raise more money online than using paper sponsorship forms. It’s faster and much easier, with less hassle for them and for your charity. What’s more, donating online via credit cards, debit cards and PayPal is more convenient for their sponsors too.

2. Build dedicated communities for your runners

Build a separate database of your marathon runners and send targeted emails that speak specifically to them. Encourage them to send in their stories and reward them by featuring them in social media posts or on your website or blog. Putting them in the spotlight will make them feel valued and motivate them to run that extra mile.

Create a marathon team on JustGiving (here’s one we made earlier) and encourage your runners to join. They’ll love feeling part of a community and appreciate you sharing useful content. Alternatively, you could create a Facebook group or plan fortnightly meet-ups where they can share tips, offer support and help one another.

3. Put yourself in your fundraisers’ shoes… or trainers!

Forget about your charity and your key messages for a moment. Instead think about the kind of questions your runners are searching for online. What trainers should I wear? What’s the best way to heal blisters quickly? What music will help me keep going when all I want to do is stop? How do I fundraise while training and working a full-time job? Are there marathon training groups in London I can join? If you can provide answers to these types of question, it will ensure a positive sentiment towards your organisation.

4. Don’t re-invent the wheel

Don’t worry if your charity hasn’t got the resource to create new and tailored content for your marathon runners. There’s lots of useful content out there already and you can help your supporters find it. Share links to interesting runner blogs and approach bloggers to write special posts just for your supporters. For example, for this year’s London marathon we asked running experts Phoebe and Nick, from coaching website RunningWithUs, to create training plans and top tips that charities can share with their runners.

5. Give words of encouragement

Marathon training is intense, so a few well-timed telephone calls to your runners saying “well done” and “keep going” could be the difference between them being one-time fundraisers and loyal, regular supporters.

6. Help your supporters help you

The best fundraising pages on JustGiving tell a story. Encourage your runners to share their unique fundraising experiences and give them information, photos and videos about your charity so they can let people know why they’re going to the trouble of raising money for you. Explain why your charity deserves support and how their donations will be used. For example £10 will buy a school desk, or £20 will help restore someone’s sight.

7. Send top tips

Encourage your runners to update their email signatures, business cards and anything else that regularly profiles them with a quick line about their fundraising. The more involved their friends feel in their marathon training, the more likely they are to donate.

Remind your runners to regularly update their social media profiles with training and fundraising progress. Every viral share of a JustGiving page on Facebook is worth an average of £5 in donations!

8. Keep fundraising after the event

Around 20% of donations through JustGiving come in after people finish their event, so when you email your runners to congratulate them on crossing the finish line, encourage them to keep on fundraising – it’s a good opportunity for fundraisers to update friends and family on how well they did, as well as make a final appeal for donations.

Have you got any top tips that you’d like to share? Let us know by adding a comment below.

Out of the city and into rural Maasai Mara – Joe Jonas, from the Grammy nominated, multi-platinum band the Jonas Brothers, recently spent eight days on a Me to We experiential volunteer trip to Kenya.

Joe Jonas in Kenya

His itinerary included volunteering with Me to We’s charity partner Free The Children, interacting and learning from local community members, and immersing himself into the rich history and culture of Kenya.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10555-joe-jonas-volunteers-in-kenya

Texas head football coach Mack Brown, recording artist Jack Ingram, and actor Matthew McConaughey are excited to announce the Mack, Jack & McConaughey (MJ&M) fundraising and entertainment series of events returns April 24-25, 2014 in Austin, Texas.

Talent and a complete schedule of events will be announced soon.

The inaugural event was on April 11-12, 2013, and raised nearly $1 million to benefit a handful of organizations that all reflect MJ&M’s goal to empower kids.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10554-matthew-mcconaugheys-charity-fundraising-events-to-return-in-2014

Sitting protectively with his canine pals Stella and Athena, Metta World Peace is the star of a brand-new PETA campaign reminding his fans that “it takes only a moment to speak up for an animal in need” and that animal abuse should always be reported immediately to local authorities.

Metta World Peace - Report Animal Abuse
Credit/Copyright: PETA

The new ad, which comes as summer temperatures around the country are skyrocketing, includes an appeal from Metta for everyone to recognize that leaving dogs in hot cars—even in the shade with the windows open a crack—is abuse. He also urges people who see a dog in a hot car never to leave the area until the animal is safe. “It’s a basic love that animals bring to your household,” he says in an exclusive video for PETA. “It’s something that only animals can do.”

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10553-metta-world-peace-report-animal-abuse

Expert advice for fundraisers who want to create solid research on which to base marketing decisions

Why personas?

Everyone thinks they know who their audience is but without data, it's just a guessing game. Building up a detailed picture of your audience is a vital stage of marketing planning and potentially even more important for the voluntary sector - by getting a firm grasp on who your audience is and what you want to achieve from your non-profit's digital communications, you can tailor your message to resonate better with potential donors and volunteers.

Despite its importance, following a recent free training session for charitable organisations we found that many fundraisers lacked the necessary knowledge to create solid research on which to base their marketing decisions and so, during the workshop, we introduced them to personas.

Personas are not new in marketing; in fact they have been around since 1994 and since then many digital marketers have been using them to gain better insight into their users. With 56% of charities reporting that they needed training to maximise the potential of digital, however, it perhaps isn't surprising that that even charitable organisations that operate heavily online did not know what they were or how to make best use of them. In response to this I've written this guide to personas specifically for non-profits.

A persona is a "fictional character that communicates the primary characteristics of a group of users, identified and selected as a key target through use of segmentation data".

By using personas in their marketing planning our attendees were able to understand and adopt the cognitive frameworks of their supporters and concentrate on designing content to fit their need states. In referring back to these reference points they are able to ensure that the content created is actually read and found useful by supporters and that it helps assist them through the decision-making process and donor funnel.

Personas are a fantastic tool to create a well-rounded view of your charity's market segments to not only help improve your brand messaging to these audiences but also, thanks to their transparency, to help you get internal buy-in from the many stakeholders from within the organisation.

Creating the personas

A marketing persona can be a complex document (especially when a large number of stakeholder groups are involved) or they can be as simple as this example highlights. Either way, below are 6 simple steps that can help you put together personas for your own specific donor segments using readily available data:

Collect your existing data

To create marketing personas for donor group segments, start by pooling the data you already have, collating all available qualitative and quantitative information about those who have already interacted with the brand. This is a great place to begin as there is no doubt a tremendous amount of material readily accessible; from recent event sign-ups, newsletter subscribers or even basic information from your CRM system.

If you are not yet collecting data on your charities event, attendees and donors, start doing so. When collated this information can be incredibly useful in understanding your current evangelists.

Use your social networks

When searching for demographic data, look no further than social networks (and no... I don't mean Klout scores). People freely volunteer their demographic information on social networks due to their open privacy settings which allows marketing tools such as Facebook Insights access to a host of data instantly, all fine-tuned to your specific audience. Logging into your Facebook page will give you a whole host of information about the community who are already engaging with your charity such as age, gender, location and language.

Another good tool to mine persona data from social media is Demographics Pro which offers further information based on followers of your Twitter accounts.

Make use of website data

There are a number of places you can go to get further data on your web users, for example Quantcast and Google's AdPlanner allow you to gather information on demographics based on the advertising profiles of websites. This is especially potent for those who have a niche target market that regularly frequents particular online meeting places or reference websites, for example, my local charity Ty Hafan could look to related sites such as that for World Hospice Day.

Drill deep down into your own website analytics data too. Take great care to look into metrics such as social media traffic and organic keyword performance to identify intent, but also pay close attention to internal search, as this may offer clues about behaviour or missed content opportunities. Look for commonalities that can help backup the insight you have already captured. For example: you may believe that your current donors consist of young digital natives, but if your analytics show a distinct lack of mobile and tablet activity there may be cause to rethink your hypothesis.

If you know how your donors prefer to find information online, whether that is via search, social or other means, you can also make yourself present in those areas and, using your improved knowledge of the target audience, work on establishing the charity within related communities.

Ask the audience

Further expand your research for more qualitative data on your target market and gain more insight into the decision-making process of donors by gathering customer feedback.

Getting responses from your current audience on their feelings towards certain social issues (it helps if these issues are related to the non-profit) can give you much more information regarding the more "touchy feely" elements of persona creation, highlighting as they do their current mind-set which, when combined with your raw data, helps give more of a narrative to your personas. This is particularly useful to charitable organisations as it offers a much more natural way of illustrating key insights to key stakeholders outside of the persona development process and the project. For example, you can create extended descriptions to personify the donor segment, making it much easier to explain your marketing decisions to others by asking: "Would 'Donor Persona A' relate to this?"

It is important to note however that this qualitative information must still be substantiated with hard data – don't forget that outside influences and biases might skew feedback responses.

Pull it all together

Using all of the data gathered you can begin to piece together a set of marketing personas that blend all of your research into a series of documents, each focused around a single personification of a market segment. The content and complexity of these documents can vary from project to project depending on the level of insight needed but, if very in-depth, can become quite detailed, including:

Age

Educational level

Social interest

Job status

Typical work experience

Main information sources (TV, web search, social media, etc.)

It is important to understand that a marketing persona does not reflect a single person. It is a hypothetical representation of the behaviour and motivations of a group of similar people that, in many cases, is captured in a 1-2 page description to make the persona a realistic character.

With a completed persona you have a real (though hypothetical) person you can imagine, understand and plan around, making it much easier to predict how they might act under any given situation and, importantly, how they will respond to certain stimuli from your campaigns.

Keep refining as more data becomes available

This list is far from comprehensive and while it does not guarantee success for your charity, it does give you a basis from which to develop your well-researched personas based on real market data. Remember though, it is important to maintain persona profiles by adding in new data from alternative sources as they become available as well as removing any traits that can no longer be backed up.

In creating personas, and gaining a more detailed understanding of donors, you can better allocate marketing budgets, evaluate opportunity cost and minimise wastage within your campaigns.

How do you currently identify your target market? Do you use a similar technique to highlight audiences or do you use a less focused approach?

Andrew Isidoro is a digital strategist at Box UK.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here.

• Fundraising
• Voluntary sector
• Charities

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Military families experienced disbelief and then excitement Saturday afternoon thanks to Richard Petty Motorsports driver Aric Almirola, Eckrich and Operation Homefront.

NASCAR Driver Aric Almirola Gives Military Families in Indianapolis a Big Surprise

A group of military families and wounded warriors, invited by Operation Homefront and Eckrich, were gathered at a private home to enjoy the summer afternoon with games, music, friends and family. When time came to start grilling, however, the party goers realized there was a problem. Their hosts had forgotten a key element to the cookout: the Eckrich smoked sausage.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10552-nascar-driver-aric-almirola-surprises-military-families

Maintaining its long-standing tradition of supporting HIV/AIDS charities, Kiehl’s Since 1851, the venerable New York-based purveyor of fine quality skin and hair care, is pleased to announce its continued partnership with amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, and the fourth annual Kiehl’s LifeRide for amfAR.

HIV/AIDS awareness has long been at the forefront of Kiehl’s philanthropic efforts, and through partnerships with organizations like amfAR, as well as the Magic Johnson AIDS Foundation and YouthAIDS, Kiehl’s has proudly donated more than $2,500,000 for the cause.

With the mission to heighten awareness, and raise funds for amfAR, the company is embarking on the fourth annual Kiehl’s LifeRide for amfAR, a charity motorcycle ride taking place July 31 – August 8, 2013, through the Pacific Northwest.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10551-stars-line-up-for-kiehls-liferide

New parents HRH Duke of Cambridge and HRH Duchess of Cambridge will break with centuries of royal tradition and will not be employing a nanny for the first few weeks of HRH Prince George of Cambridge’s life.

Action on Hearing Loss, (previously the RNID) has stepped in with the ultimate baby monitor for the hands-on couple. As well as featuring the usual sound monitor it also has state-of-the-art video monitoring technologies so the royal couple can not only hear but see their little bundle of joy sleeping soundly.

Baby care and safety is the major consideration for any parent, and the royal couple have already shown their knowledge and dexterity in this matter with the baby car seat they expertly used upon leaving hospital. However, with HRH Prince of Cambridge now at home, the royal couple will be familiarising themselves with sleepless nights. With no nanny to assist them, Action on Hearing Loss hope their gift will provide that all important sense of security that all new parents wish for, whether deaf or hearing.

More: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/10550-royal-baby-gets-gift-from-hearing-loss-charity

Building a Digital Analytics Organization: Create Value by Integrating Analytical Processes, Technology, and People into Business Operations
Judah Phillips (Author)
Publication Date: 30 July 2013

Buy new: £25.99 £20.43

(Visit the Hot Future Releases in Web Marketing list for authoritative information on this product's current rank.)

We write a lot about how to inspire supporters with compelling stories and clear calls to action, but even the most well-crafted messages are worthless if no one sees them. In addition to your outreach via email marketing or direct mail, it’s equally important to ensure your cause is well-represented through press outreach, social media, and search. Tomorrow, Network for Good is hosting a
free webinar for nonprofits to learn more about effective publicity tactics from our friends at PR NewsChannel. This is a great opportunity to get your questions answered and pick up some practical PR tips from the pros, just in time to put them into place for your fall events and year-end fundraising campaigns.

Register now for the live webinar on Tuesday, July 30 at 1pm ET. (If you can’t attend the event at that time, go ahead and register—you’ll receive an email with the playback recording of the session, plus the slides.)

A couple of days later than usual, here is my latest round-up of articles worth reading. Enjoy.

Amanda dissects a thank you letter she received from Sightsavers.

The Fundraising Collective reflect on the 2013 IoF Convention.

Lucy finally quits supporting a charity after over a decade of support. It couldn't happen to your organisation could it?

 Kevin skips Twitter for a week. What did he learn?

 Agents of Good are donor focussed.

Future Fundraising Now share another stupid nonprofit ad.

Sean with a great way to destroy your individual giving fundraising.

Five questions determine if you can know a charity's effectiveness.

Nancy shares a lovely story about her 107 year old aunt and relationship building.

Karen gives us 13 quick tips on acquisition and retention.

Change Fundraising on when to refuse a donation.

The latest series of posts by the Veritus Group is on staff retention.

Seven steps to setting up a major gift solicitation meeting from the Fundraising Coach.

Seth on marketing magic beans.