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Giving and Funding

The 7 Biggest Mistakes in Handling Donor Data

  So much is written every month in various nonprofit publications and blog posts regarding the insights and best practices revolving around fundraising. Virtually all of them are truly insightful and can lead to greater successes.   However, just a few mistakes here and there in the handling of your data can easily decrease your fundraising […]

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Using Design Thinking for A Foundation’s Investment Strategy

  What if a funder got real-time input from its grantees and other partners to develop its investment strategy?  What if they used a design thinking process to not only get feedback from grantees but as a way to develop a more agile way of working?   I was thrilled to work with the Brainerd Foundation staff to […]

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Community Insights: Richard Turner

  In our latest post for our Community Insights series, we talk to Richard Turner, Chief Fundraiser at SolarAid about his career as a fundraiser and the biggest opportunities in digital fundraising.     Tell us a bit about yourself and your career so far.   I’ve been a fundraiser for 25 years, this year! Not […]

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Facebook’s Donate Button Helps Build Donor Lists

  In 2013, Facebook rolled out a ‘donate’ button for partnered nonprofits. Twenty months after their pilot, the social network has rolled out the feature to all nonprofits and charities, according to Megan O’Neil’s piece for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, ‘Facebook’s New Donate Button Helps Charities Build Donor Lists‘.   In the original pilot, the […]

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A $47 Billion Opportunity

  Over the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of talking with scores of people about how and why they engage in philanthropy. In the course of these conversations, I’ve been struck by a real and important tension. While we speak passionately and sincerely about the importance of giving, most donors’ giving does not […]

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Community Insights: Alison Carlman

We caught up with Alison Carlman at GlobalGiving to learn how she became involved with the crowdfunding platform and about the opportunities she sees for nonprofits in this space.

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How Come This Foundation’s Grantees Love its Reporting Process So Much?

    Most charities hate the reporting which funders make them do. Notionally a learning process, it’s often just compliance, box-ticking and a dead-weight cost. But not so apparently for the Inter-American Foundation, an independent US government agency which grant-funds citizen-led community development across Latin America and the Caribbean. IAF seems to be a positive outlier: […]

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GlobalGiving’s Big Bet

GlobalGiving’s Alison Carlman explains how the crowdfunding platform is using gamification, incentives, and behavioral economics to encourage organizations to listen, act, and learn more efficiently.

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Using Data to Drive Donations

  Online crowdfunding is becoming an increasingly popular way for nonprofits to reach new donors and enhance fundraising efforts. This exciting format brings with it new opportunities, but also questions about how best to take advantage to raise awareness and important funds for their cause.   Since 2002, the nonprofit GlobalGiving—a global crowdfunding community for nonprofits—has helped […]

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A Data-Led, Common Sense Approach to Online Fundraising

  Stanford computer scientists Jure Leskovec and Tim Althoff have analysed 14-years worth of online donations to help organisations systematise behaviours that can greatly boost the cash value of donations. Their analysis of anonymous data reveals insights into ways to increase donor retention, from the kinds of requests that perform well, to the timings of […]

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