Get off the Couch - Wayne Elsey's Blog

Have you ever thought about why your donors give? Perhaps we can get more detailed than simply “they believe in our cause.” Recently, Hope Consulting and GuideStar released their findings from the Money for Good study. In the second part of their report, they pointed out that there are six (Continue reading…)

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about measuring influence in social media. Klout seems to have cornered the market on quantifying influence, but I have my doubts about the tool. Tim Kastelle is right on the money in his recent post about this exact topic. I’d like to highlight three (Continue reading…)

I am thrilled to congratulate Stephanie Taylor Smith on winning the Flippin Good Deeds Blogger Challenge! Stephanie utilized her blog Musings of a Silly Girl to urge her readers to clean out their closets and donate gently worn footwear to Soles4Souls. During the short, three month contest Stephanie collected over (Continue reading…)

Last week I commented on donor happiness. This week I want to continue brainstorming about how we can raise donor happiness. One of the simplest, most often overlooked vehicles for increasing donor happiness is the thank you note. Often, instead of receiving a year-end thank you, donors receive a year-end (Continue reading…)

Jeff Brooks recently wrote a spot-on post that identified his “best practices” for editing fundraising copy. Brooks’ primary point is this: less is more. The purpose of editing is to say precisely what  you mean with fewer words. The problem is sometimes the editing process makes fundraising copy even longer. (Continue reading…)

Thoreau once said, “It is not enough to be busy…The question is: What are we busy about?” Americans are busy people. I’m reminded of that every time I travel overseas. If you’re like me, the to-do list never ends. To have a day free from commitments, I have to block (Continue reading…)

The Red Cross conducted a phone survey earlier this year asking Americans about their plans for charitable giving this holiday season. While the economy is still sluggish, the majority of people plan to make a charitable donation this holiday season. Here are some key findings: ●     70% expect to donate (Continue reading…)

Gretchen Rubin’s, The Happiness Project, is a natural bestseller. The reason why it has peaked the interest of readers everywhere is that people do, in fact, want to be happy. Rubin’s book picks up on the power of positive psychology, something nonprofits should tap into as well. Razoo recently published (Continue reading…)

Sometimes being the CEO of an organization is inspiring and rewarding, but sometimes you find yourself in the wrong headspace and it quickly becomes stressful and overwhelming.  Today started off as one of those days for me.  After getting word late last week that a very close friend of mine (Continue reading…)

JustGiving.com recently released an interesting infograph on the changing landscape of online donations. According to JustGiving.com, 2011 ushered in a huge increase in social media donations. Here are four findings that are worth knowing: Twitter users are likely to donate the highest amount, followed by Youtube then Linkedin then Facebook. (Continue reading…)