Fundraising’s Solid Ground

As I write this, we literally live in a world filled with uncertainty. While us analysts cannot predict the future of fundraising, we are pretty good at studying past donor behavior, and that can help us better understand how we should respond in times of uncertainty....

Fundraising in the Time of Coronavirus

As all of anxiously watch the spread of COVID-19 from China to the rest of the globe, we are all holding our breath on how this is going to affect donor behavior. Fortunately, December 2019 giving was particularly strong for most organizations. However, early data...

The Hard Work of Volunteering

Seems like one of the constant topics in the nonprofit blogosphere is this idea of growing your donor base through providing volunteer opportunities. My personal experience has been quite the opposite really. Being an introverted analyst, I am always hesitant to...

My Fall In-Box

I don’t know about you, but I received far fewer direct mail appeals this fall (between October 1st and December 31st.) Last year, I received an even 50 direct mail appeals. This year, I received only 30. That’s a 40% decrease in volume, which is significant. During...

A Cautionary Tale of Stopping New Donor Acquisition

As I’ve shared before, one of our most common analyses, sadly, is projecting what happens to a donor file’s active counts if an organization decides to discontinue new donor acquisition – after all, new donor acquisition is just too expensive. Well, today’s graph is...