Seed Money for Nonprofits – 11 Keys to Success

Are you forming a new nonprofit and think the grant money will just pour in the second you start asking for grants? Maybe it will, but more likely than not, you will find it challenging to find foundations and corporations that want to invest in ...

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Want Rockstar Results? 6 Key Elements in a Nonprofit Plan

Don’t let all this talk about nonprofit plans, strategic plans, fundraising plans, marketing plans or annual plans get you rattled. Whenever your nonprofit year begins – be it January or June – it’s never too late to put nonprofit planning on the agenda. Even if ...

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Raising Funds and Raising Spirits: Keep Your Group Motivated

The goal of this article is to motivate you to think about motivation. The most brilliant Fundraising ideas can produce disappointing results if people are not motivated to implement them. There will be no plan of action in what follows, but rather our thoughts intended ...

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Mid-Year Review: How is this Year Shaping Up for Your Nonprofit Goals?

There’s no time like mid-year to evaluate your nonprofit’s performance. Now’s the time to measure how planning and strategizing have paid off and more significantly, what’s working and what needs to be tweaked. No matter whether your fiscal year ends in December or June, at ...

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Getting Your Grant: 10 Things to Focus on Besides Writing

To get grant dollars, whether from private foundations or government agencies, your writing should be secondary to other preparations. Too many nonprofits make the mistake of investing in a solid technical writer and spending hours preparing a lengthy proposal with perfect grammar, while ignoring what ...

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Be Arty, Be Green, Make Money: How Bottle Cap Murals Can Help Your Nonprofit

If you have a group of volunteers, youth program participants, board members, or staff that need a teambuilding exercise, and you are thinking about involving them in an art project but you have little funding, resources, or artistic ability, try a project anyone can do ...

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Got the Donor Blues? Stewardship and Donor Relations

There’s a phenomenon, a wave of charity and compassion that greets cataclysmic events and earth shattering tragedies. The torrent of giving that follows a crisis or disaster fills the databanks of nonprofits with new benefactors. But all too often this groundswell of emotional response is ...

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10 Mistakes Nonprofit Professionals Make

Doesn’t the nonprofit sector attract the idealistic, self-sacrificing individuals amongst us? And wouldn’t that mean that mistakes are factors that just don’t happen? You have a passion to make a difference, there’s so much good you want to accomplish. But the charity sector has unique ...

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5 Green Funding Ideas to Aid Your Operating Budget

Can’t find those operating budget funds? You have great grant-funded projects, but you can’t keep the lights on in your administrative building? Operating support can be difficult to attract and then to maintain for your organization, especially when dollars are tight in your main mission ...

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9 Ways to Use Nonprofit Watchdogs’ Standards to Up Your Game

The nonprofit sector is huge. Did you know the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University reports that more than 70 million people work and volunteer in the industry? Nonprofits produce more than 1.9 trillion dollars annually and employ the third-largest workforce of ...

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Seven Criteria to Consider when Selecting Fundraising Software

If your nonprofit or community organization is hosting a fundraising event, one of your first decisions will be deciding how to manage your fundraising campaign. With the many online fundraising software options available today, there is no reason for your organization to struggle with the ...

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Consider This Before Searching for an International Fundraising Job

Devon has lived and worked in Paraguay for more than three years, helping nearly 20 community groups, schools, and government agencies design and fund sustainable programs for economic and social development. Are you having trouble finding a job in the U.S and willing (or wanting) ...

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Sample Letter: Adapting Your Proposal Cover Letter for Email

More and more, funders – including government agencies, corporations, foundations, and individuals – are asking non profits to save the paper and email their proposals or submit them online. They can then take highlights out of your pitch, if they review it, to present to ...

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Sample Proposal Letter: How to Write an Environmental Proposal Pitch that Appeals to Funders

“Green” is in, and more and more funders are giving to environmental causes, but donations to environmental nonprofits and projects still only constitute around 7% of US philanthropy (Giving USA).  While funders see environment as a worthy giving sector, it is hard to compete with ...

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5 Ways to Use Earth Day to Put Your Nonprofit in the Green

If it seems like every other advertisement is adopting a “green” strategy to show product alignment with environmental friendliness, you are not seeing things. Corporations, nonprofits, and even government agencies are hopping on the green bandwagon because it pays off. Studies show that a majority ...

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