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January 2012
The Consumers Guide to Integrated Software for Community Foundations looks at the features and processes used by five different integrated software solutions to help community foundations manage funds, track grants throughout their life cycles, solicit donations, provide online support for donor advised funds, and tracking accounting data.
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January 2012
What if a percentage of the $150 billion spent annually in online shopping could be donated to nonprofits working to make the world a better place?That’s exactly the promise a growing number of web-based businesses are making—purchase something from an online retailer you find through their site, and they’ll send a percentage to the organization of your choice. Neither users nor their designated charities pay anything—the donations come from participating merchants, who pay the sites a commission for each online purchase referred through them.
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By Colin Pizarek and Chris Bernard,
January 2012
Neither “snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” might stay the U.S. Post Office’s couriers from delivering the mail entrusted to them, but it’s a cold fact of the digital world that email has no such steadfast guardians. Some electronic mail will simply never reach its destination—it might go to a bad address, get caught in a spam filter, or routed to a “junk” folder where it’s deleted or overlooked. This can be frustrating for nonprofits who work hard to nurture a list of email addresses.
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January 2012
Articles, conferences and books have been devoted to the concept and strategies behind evaluating the success of programs, but there’s surprisingly little information available about how to fit data tracking and analysis software into such efforts. Until now...
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December 2011
Since most organizations don’t track just one type of constituent, the idea of a single database for all of them—donors, volunteers, clients, email subscribers, advocates and everyone else—is something of a holy grail.
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December 2011
An email list is one of the sharpest arrows in any nonprofit’s quiver. An effective list can maximize your reach, help foster closer relationships with constituents and improve fundraising. But what makes a list effective? For one thing, critical mass—the more people you can reach who are genuinely interested in your organization, the better.
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December 2011
Since most organizations don’t track just one type of constituent, the idea of a single database for all of them—donors, volunteers, clients, email subscribers, advocates and everyone else—is something of a holy grail. The ability to easily see how all your constituents interact with your organization, and with each other, makes for an attractive, ideal vision of what a database should be.
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November 2011
This article originally ran in the November 1 edition of The NonProfit Times.
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November 2011
Advocacy organizations often encourage their grassroots supporters to influence politicians and corporations using different methods, from promoting a cause or opposing legislation to challenging ad campaigns or policies. A large display of public opinion can have a powerful message, and advocacy groups often help to focus and channel this support to make the most impact.
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November 2011
It’s been six years (almost to the day) since I incorporated Idealware as a nonprofit. At the time, the idea of providing impartial info to help nonprofits choose software was more of an aspiration than a reality. But 15 reports and well more than 100 articles later—and about 60,000 nonprofits helped—it’s humbling to look back on the real impact Idealware has had on the ability of nonprofits to make smart software decisions.
