Fundraising and Special Events

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How to Use and Add More Events to VolunteerMatch’s 2012 Volunteer Engagement Calendar

Submitted by Cara Thenot
on Tue, 12/20/2011 - 22:14

Thanks to Engaging Volunteers, VolunteerMatch’s informative and focused blog, for starting Google calendar with dates and ideas for motivating volunteers throughout 2012. You can download the calendar by clicking on the tiny “Google Calendar” button at the bottom of the calendar on their blog post.

November 20, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 11/20/2011 - 00:00

Emergen (http://emergen.com.au) is an online community for "emerging young leaders" in Australia, made up of over 1000 professionals aged 20-35. Along with online and in-person learning opportunities, it provides participants "the opportunity to develop their professional brand and reputation. Members can do this through blogging, being interviewed for Emergen TV or participating in our Awards program." They even provide Bloggers Training online.

One of Emergen’s projects is "Blogging for a Cause Ebooks," the latest of which is a Tribute to the International Year of the Volunteer. This 60-page, graphically elegant document (using the issuu publishing platform) offers first-person accounts of different volunteer experiences, as expressed by volunteer bloggers. The contributors are diverse in all sorts of ways: culturally, ethnically, degree of involvement in volunteer work, and the types of causes they support.

The essays even tackle negative perceptions and controversies about

September 4, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 09/04/2011 - 00:00

501Videos (www.501videos.com) is a video production company owned by Christopher Davenport, a successful documentary producer. His interest is in presenting his video production services to nonprofits and he’s found a unique way to market his services that also provides useful resources. 501Videos offers a weekly series of free, short (3 to 5 minutes) videos called "Movie Mondays."

Although promoted as "for Fundraising Professionals" and focused on increasing financial donations, the videos cover many different topics, including board management, community outreach, and donor relations. For example, the topic last week was "The New Look of Board Meetings (for creating high performing boards)," dealing with how to prepare for and structure meeting agendas for more effective board interaction.

A new topic appears every Monday and that’s the point. When you sign up, you get notices by e-mail of the new topic and log in for one week of access to the newest video.

Look! Up in the Sky!

Submitted by Tristan Dahn
on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 00:00

It’s a bird! It’s a plane!  No, it’s Carol Weisman’s fantastic new book, Fundraising Superheroes!

Aimed at short-on-time board members, Carol offers hundreds of tips on how to more effectively raise funds for your organization.  These ideas are presented in short, digestible, one page articles  accompanied by colorful and humorous illustrations.

Best of all, many of her pointers are immediately actionable.  You can open up to almost any page and, by the end of the day, have added some new piece to your fundraising puzzle.  Others, such as an event which needs to be planned or the setting up of a system to track donor’s gifts, may take slightly longer, but are presented in a simple way and “can-do” attitude, which might be exactly what you need to push you into action.

The superhero theme, humorous writing style, and colorful illustrations make the reading fun.  You may just find yourself turning off the television to read about organizational fundraising!  Gasp!

Volunteers as Donors (plus Peek at New “From the Top Down”)

Submitted by Lindsay Liprando
on Tue, 12/08/2009 - 00:00

“Volunteers Donate, On Average, 10 Times More Money than Non-Volunteers.” That’s a headline sure to get the attention of anyone in the not-for-profit world. It’s just one of the important findings in a recent study released on December 3 by the Fidelity® Charitable Gift Fund and VolunteerMatch.  The findings support Energize’s long-held stance that volunteer-involving organizations should remember their “time donors” when looking to support volunteer involvement financially. In 1996, Energize President Susan J. Ellis wrote in her best-selling book From the Top Down, “studies have shown that satisfied volunteers frequently are so supportive of the organizations with which they serve that they become donors of money and goods as well.”

When revising her book, Susan greatly expanded her take on the connection between volunteering and donating funds.  Here’s an excerpt from the soon-to-be released 3rd edition of From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement.

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