If you aren’t familiar with the concept of a “charity watchdog,” then you’re probably familiar with at least one or two of them. Organizations like GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and the Better Business Bureau’s Give.org aggregate information on nonprofit organizations to empower perspective donors, volunteers, grantors, board members, and employees to make informed decisions about the organizations and causes to which they can devote their time, energy, and resources. If you’re not engaging with websites like these to boost credibility and knowledge around your organization, then you’re missin ..read more

You may have heard of Salesforce.com before – it’s one of the most robust and customizable database softwares in the industry. But while many nonprofit organizations are attracted to promises of free licenses and a seemingly endless library of widgets, even more find themselves hopelessly tangled in fields of data and needlessly complex reporting mechanisms. Let’s dive in to what Salesforce can do and whether or not it could help you in your fundraising efforts. What is Salesforce.com? Salesforce.com is a San Francisco company that makes an online database available to nonprofits. The dat ..read more

Did you miss yesterday’s webinar on the Subscription Giving method of fundraising? Do you want a refresher to share with the rest of your team? Here are the Top 5 Takeaways from our conversation with Network for Good Product Manager, Peter Hart, and VP of Fundraising, Kimberly O’Donnell! 1. Let’s address the elephant in the room… donor retention As a sector, we place too much emphasis on one-time gifts. Last year, for the first time we saw that retention dropped year over-year, while donors grew year-over year. That means that donors haven’t stopped giving, they have just moved to other charit ..read more

In today’s digital world, email is a fundamental tool for engaging your donors and your audience. Here are four tips to help you make the most of your email campaigns and communications! Tip #1: Experiment It’s always a great time to think about experimenting with your emails. When we think about experimentation, consider something like what in marketing is known as ‘A/B testing’: Let’s say you’re sending out our newsletter and you split your group of 1,000 people in half; 500 get one version of the newsletter and 500 get another. Then, track those different groups. How many people open each e ..read more

It was incredibly important to organizations looking to grow their engagement with donors pre-March 2020, but we know that now, engaging over social media is more important than ever. And while we may often think, “our donors are getting so much information thrown at them” or, “maybe we should go a little quieter and not have as much content out there,” we’ve seen from past examples that organizations that kept communicating and kept fundraising through crises were the ones that did best. We want to make sure that we’re actually asking our communities to give us their time, their advocacy, the ..read more

It’s go time: Reinforce your donor’s decision to give by reminding them of the impact their support. Include a short but strong statement about how a donor’s support matters. This is also a perfect opportunity to nudge your donors to act now by underscoring the sense of urgency. In this lesson, you’ll: Learn why your call to action matters How to craft an effective call to action Get practical tips on optimizing all the copy on your donation page Why your call to action matters Any successful nonprofit fundraising campaign has an effective call to action. Your call to action is the actual sp ..read more

Ok, so you know recurring giving can be a big win for your nonprofit. But how do you do it, exactly? Never fear, this lesson will walk you through setting up (or retooling) your own monthly giving program. Ready? Let’s do this! In this lesson, we’ll cover: Setting a goal for recurring giving How to outline a framework for your monthly giving program Identifying the best prospects for recurring giving What are you trying to do, anyway? A bit of advice about setting goals. This is where starting at the beginning is really starting at the end. Let me explain. If you don’t have a clear goal in m ..read more

If you’ve visited our site before, you might notice that today it looks a little different! After nearly a year in development, working closely with the small nonprofits we serve, today we unveiled our brand new website. We’re so excited to share it with the world! Why did we decide to launch a new site? Long-time visitors to our previous website might know that it hasn’t changed much since it was launched in 2015. But a ton has changed here at Network for Good! We’ve grown as a company, added many improvements to our fundraising software, and created literally thousands of blog posts, guides ..read more

This year has been full of challenges for our nonprofit friends and their communities. But, it’s a tradition here at Network for Good to spend this time of year reflecting on the bright spots and finding reasons to celebrate. And this year, despite everything, there have been many. We saw donors come out in force to make this a record year of charitable giving. We watched small nonprofits embrace virtual fundraising almost overnight. We witnessed incredible, inspiring acts of bravery and creativity as nonprofit leaders found ways to keep staff and volunteers safe while serving their communitie ..read more

In March of 2020, Facebook revealed that it has 2.6 billion monthly active users. YouTube has 2 million, and Instagram has 1.8 billion. Social media platforms are a great place to connect with people who are passionate about the cause your nonprofit is working for. If you post interesting and interactive content and engage regularly on the platform, you can attract donors and supporters who will help your organization spread the word about the work you’re doing. And you don’t have to have a large following to make a big impact. In this post, we share how to make the most of social media as a s ..read more