Donation vacation….with results

Well done to Damian at ask direct and Tim and the team at Irish hospice foundation. Damian posted yesterday about a mailing Irish hospice foundation did talking to donors about it being ok if they needed to cancel their monthly gift.

This is something I posted about on Dec 18th, a donation vacation.

But Damian and co have done it and have results.

4 people cancelled.

4….not 40….not 400…..4

Fantastic. And others increased their current gift. Guess how many?

400!

What a result. Talk about building trust in your organisation. A brave strategy that has paid off

Read my donation vacation post here
http://conorbyrne.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/a-donation-vacation/

Read damians post from ask direct here http://bit.ly/Dsp8O

Non 1st, change 2nd

This post is simply to re direct you to a great post by Seth Godin today.

In it he talks about the problem with non….non profit.

“I know what you’re not but what are you?”.

Seriously go check it out here, now…..http://bit.ly/Lw566

6 steps to helping your fundraisers….1 missing

The non profit times has a good article on 6 secrets to making your athon event a success, all of which are very good. Common sense maybe to you and me but maybe not to someone who signs up to take part in your event.

They have missed one though….I think. And that’s your role.

We can’t just take these people for granted, once they sign up let them on their way. You wouldn’t hire someone to work in your office and after a 5 min introduction let them on their way….would you?

No, you would support them, check in with them, meet them. I think you should do this with your athon supporters too. With social media this can be done in groups, and then you can do individual contacts too.

If you think you can’t do this, check out can too in Australia and tell me what you think.

These people aren’t fundraisers so don’t think they are.

The article in non profit times is good, and worth a read, but I think they have missed a trick. You can read it here
http://www.nptimes.com/instantfund/09Sep/IF-090910-1.html

Nominations for Fundraising Ireland Awards close soon

The closing date for the National Fundraising Awards is approaching fast, 5pm on Tuesday, 1 September.

The Awards – which are presented by Fundraising Ireland and The Wheel with support from Vodafone Ireland Foundation – are Ireland’s only accolade for fundraisers.

Voluntary or professional fundraisers can be nominated in one or more of the following categories:
• Fundraiser of The Year
• Fundraising Campaign of The Year
• Community Fundraiser of The Year

Nominations must be made online at www.fundraisingawards.ie by 5pm on Tuesday, 1 September

Organisations don’t speak

I was sent a message on facebook the other day from an organisation I support.

But an organisation isn’t capable of posting a message is it!

How hard would it have been to have said…Hi its Conor here from organisation X and I have some exciting news for you…..etc…

I see it all too often where anonymous people send out group mails….it doesn’t make sense to me. Say who you are, make it personal.

Back soon…..

Im off for a while, taking some leave until August 18th. I had hoped to have a guest blogger posting while I was away but it hasnt worked out.

See you in a short while and thanks for reading.

Conor

Blogging Presentation

Here is the blogging presentation from yesterdays Fundraising Ireland event. All the others will be up on Fundraising Ireland in the next few days (and they are definitely worth checking out!!)

96FM’s Cork for Kids Radiothon

It kicks off at 6am this morning. These guys did an amazing job last year (and thanks to KP for what she did to get this off the ground in year 1),  I have heard some of the stories that families have been kind enough to share with them this year and they are incredible.

What always gets me about these events is the fact that, no matter what the families and children have been through, they have nothing but good things to say about the hospitals. Cork is no different and CUH and Mercy’s children’s wards do amazing work, day in and day out.

This event is being run in conjunction with Children’s Miracle Network (yes thats who the day job is with).  Its going to be great.

Tune in online here or follow my twitter updates here

40,000 Women Raising Millions

The Women’s Mini Marathon is a great event. 40,000 women take part and the majority of them use it as an occassion to raise money for their favourite charity, resulting in Millions being raised for charity. Good luck to them all.

Rules of Engagement

Donal Cronin of Carr Communications wrote a really nice piece in the Aer Lingus inflight magazine this month about effective speech making. And yes guess who he spoke about..President Obama. But he is right too, Obama is a phenomenal orator.

As I read the piece I thought that it would be good to share. A lot of us would make speeches so it would be useful, but I felt the points had broader relevance to what we do and could be applied in many aspects of our work. So here are the rules (with my editing):

1. When You’re on You’re on: Get straight into it…dont dance around the topic. Straight to topic, no preamble. Be instantly gripping
2. Talk to One Person: Talk to You singular not You the many
3. Use the Rule of Three: Things that come in threes have a satisfying rhythm.  So group your points in threes.
4. You are Allowed to be Human: Dont become a robot. Be human and you will connect (remember when Obama spoke to his daughters…every parent related to that)
5. Talk the way you normally talk: this is my pet peeve with non-profits. We talk in our language. Cronin says speak the way you would speak with friends. You don’t use words like infrastructure or paradigm shift! It’s known as 1st degree language.
6. Paint a Picture, Tell a Story: People relate easily and emotionally to stories, examples, anecdotes. More importantly people remember them. Our brains are hard wired for stories, we have passed stories on from genereation to generation.
7. Finally: PowerPoint (and ok yes this can only apply to presentations)….do you need it? Do you think President Obama’s speeches would have been more memorable if someone had given him some nice slides!

Flutter – the new twitter?!

thanks Paul

Virgin Money Announce their Pricing

As you probably know Virgin are moving into the lucrative online giving market and have announced their pricing. They seem pretty competitive, although they don’t accept paypal and dont have you tube integration. It will be inetersting to see how this one plays out, just giving is a well known brand, but now they are up against the might of Virgin! Check their release here

 

12-292

12 months blogging today.

292 posts in that time!

Thanks to you for reading and commenting

It may be a quiet week!

Im travelling with work for the week so may not get to post, although I will try! 

Its actually a pretty cool trip Im on. We are bringing some children to an event in Orlando. We call them our Champions.

I will be on twitter so if you want to follow my week with the champions you can check out my tweets. http://twitter.com/conorbyrne

Red Nose Day

Its not far off now. While Telethons in a lot of markets are struggling both Children in Need and Comic Relief seem to still thrive.

I checked out their website, expecting to be blown away by it, and to be honest I wasn’t. Dont get me wrong it is a good site, but I really thought there would be something WOW about it. My plan was to tell people to go there and take a look at it, almost as a “this is how to do it”….but I don’t think I would say that about the site. I actually got a bit dizzy looking through it!

I do like their new Red Nose’s and the t-shirts. They do give some great fundraising ideas, or should I say they have a great list of fundraising ideas (nothing really new). But their site disappointed me a bit!

What do you think…..rednoseday.com