I've been a huge fan of GivingTuesday since I first heard about it back in September, 2012 during a conference at Stanford.  I'm pleased to see that some of the skepticism and complaints have now morphed in to more capacity builders providing tips for nonprofits to take advantage of this national day of giving. Giving Days organized by local communities are being adopted by many more communities than ever before and a stronger understanding how these efforts can help build the capacity of … [Read more...]

I'm just back from a trip to Europe where I  was part of the opening plenary at this year's International Fundraising Congress outside of Amsterdam. (I also keynoted the NGO track at the Internet Festival in Pisa, Italy (more about that in separate post later).   The IFC is amazing global community of fundraising professionals, representing nonprofits working in every continent of the globe.    The conference had 1,000 delegates and offers high quality production values and advanced content … [Read more...]

Perry Chen is an American Internet entrepreneur best known for co-founding the social fundraising website Kickstarter.   Today, he has launched a platform to help raise money for nonprofits that are doing highly effective work, but may not be as well known to a larger audience.   The platform is called "Dollar A Day.   The idea is simple.   Everyday they will donate a dollar a day to specific nonprofit, encourage others to donate, and promote the nonprofit's work to their network via a brief … [Read more...]

Note for Beth: Most of my work over the last twenty years in nonprofit technology has been focused on designing and facilitating capacity building projects, specifically training and peer learning projects that help participants successfully learn and apply skills using online technology, social media, networks, measurement, training design or other topic.    The idea around peer learning groups is that participants learn skills that they assimilate as part of their ongoing practice. Over the … [Read more...]

The amount of money raised for ALS research through the IceBucket Challenge is almost $100 million and the other impacts are just as impressive.    Scores of nonprofit fundraising staffers report being called on to replicate the challenge.    Jeremiah Owyang has provided the easy recipe and I've provided an analysis of what can and cannot be reproduced.   So, now we are seeing an emerging practice that for lack of a better phrase, I'm calling "Charity Jacking." Charity Jacking is similar to … [Read more...]