Marketing Articles About Non-Profits Search Results

1. EFCO Annual Give Back Event.

   The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado is having their first annual "give back" event on Saturday 8/16.  If you are an employee of a company that is an EFCO member, you and your family are invited.  EFCO is doing this in conjunction with the Intercambio-KGNU Friendship Fun Run.  The logistics follow:

   August 16 at Foothills Community Park (at Broadway and Violet, Boulder)
   8 AM & 9:15 AM Adult 5K
   8:45 AM Kids' 1K
   11 AM to Noon - Intercambio Strategic Planning Session  
   Noon - Celebration Family Picnic

   For some background on Intercambio, I asked Lee Shainis, the Executive Director, a few questions.

   • Who is Intercambio?  We are an innovative, efficient and independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2001 that works to build respectful communities and broaden opportunities for immigrants through language education, cultural exchange and friendship. 
     
   • What does Intercambio do? We provide affordable and flexible English classes for over 1,000 adult immigrants each year, taught by over 350 trained volunteers at immigrants' homes, other nonprofit agencies, and at public buildings.  We also offer community resource information and workshops as well as intercultural exchange through community social events such as potlucks, fiestas, camping trips and park clean-ups.  Over 1,800 people attend our intercultural events each year. 
     
   • Why is this important for our community? In recent years, immigration has sparked a great deal of fear and discomfort in our society. Immigrants are striving to feel more confident and successful in their surrounding communities, but language barriers, fear, and lack of cultural understanding are severe obstacles. Intercambio provides a sustainable solution to these challenges and addresses the root causes by bringing together individuals from different backgrounds for an ongoing period of time with the objectives of learning from each other, building understanding, and creating a more inclusive community in which people of all cultural backgrounds feel better able to communicate, participate, and contribute.  We are transforming the way immigrants and non-immigrants are able to communicate with each other, while fostering intercultural friendships that lead to deeper cultural understanding.

   Come join us for what should be a fun and interesting morning.  Register for the fun run and - if you are interested in volunteering to help with the event - please email Brandon Rattiner.

   

   
   (08/12/08 09:00 AM)

2. Email Marketing for Nonprofits. Nonprofits are confronted with many of the questions that any other enterprise often ponders: How do I connect with my customers? Which communication vehicle will provide my organization with the highest return on investment? How can I determine what my target market wants? While many of our corporate friends have turned to email marketing to help answer these questions, the concept is comparatively new to nonprofits. Email marketing may not be the silver bullet for every problem, but it provides us with an efficient and affordable tool to communicate with our constituents. (05/13/08 09:01 AM)

3. Referrals From Great Sites.

   Every once in a while I take a look at the Google Analytics reports for my website. These reports provide detailed statistics about the number and type of visitors to a site, where they came from, what pages they visited, etc. The reports contain a lot of data and take a while to review, which is why I only look at them occasionally.

   But one of the reports I do like to look at is the Referring Sites Report, which indicates which sites referred people to my site via a link. And if you are interested in grants (both government and non-government grants), grantwriting, or grant research, you'll want to take a look at some of the websites that send the most visitors to Proposalwriter.com . Among my top 10 referring sites are:

   • The Grants Information Collection at the University of Wisconsin. This fabulous site has a wealth of information on grants, funding, and other related topics. I'm delighted to say that they link to my site on four different pages. They have consistently been my #1 referral site.
   • My #2 referral site is The Foundation Center, which sends visitors to my site via links on 3 of their many pages. If you want grant-related information from the nation's leading authority on non-profits, The Foundation Center's site is one of the first places you should investigate.
   • The third site that sends the most visitors to my site is the US House of Representatives. Somewhere among the its many pages there has been a link to my site for several years. Except I don't know where it is, and oddly enough the link is to my Guestbook. I've never taken the time to try to figure out how people get to my site from this site.
   • #9 on the list is the University of Michigan's Proposal Writing Help Page, which of course contains info and links on proposal writing.

   In addition to Google Analytics, I use Google Webmaster Tools to find out how many other sites have links to mine. At present, Webmaster Tools shows that there are over 4,100 external links from other sites to the various pages on my site. But this number seems to include quite a few dupicates, so it's hard to tell what the real number is.   

   Nevertheless, I'm pretty satisfied.

   (03/06/08 09:01 AM)

4. Disruptors Video: One Laptop Per Child. In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I visit One Laptop Per Child, the non-profit building $176 laptops for children in the developing world. I think they are disruptive for many reasons, but foremost is that by trying to design a laptop that initially was supposed to be under $100 they had to rethink many things about computers that most of us take for granted, like the display, the networking, the power consumption, and the durability. (There's no hard drive in this thing). It's also one of the greenest computers on the planet. CTO Mary Lou Jepsen explains to me in the video how getting the power consumption down to a fraction of what a normal laptop needs was one of the main challenges. (It turns out they do this by turning things off when they are not in use to a greater degree than conventional computers do). Don't be surprised if you start seeing many of these features copied in regular laptops soon. Watch the video. (09/14/07 09:00 PM)

5. Learn, Earn, Return. I've just joined my first Board of Directors, what an honor. The organization, eBizITPA, is a non-profit focused on increasing IT investment in small and medium sized businesses in the state of Pennsylvania. I have my first board meeting next month - I'm sure I'll be boring you with stuff about this in the coming months...... (04/06/07 09:01 AM)

6. Free one-pager for non profits (org2.0). Courtesy of Npower New York and Squidoo. Download pdf Feel free to share.... (12/12/06 08:47 AM)

7. I Know You're Out There.

   I don't know the names of most of the subscribers to this blog. Many people don't submit any name at all, and many use personal e-mail addresses and not the e-mail addresses of their companies and organizations. That is fine with me -- I don't have a need for names or e-mail addresses (except to send my update notifications). My mailing list is never used for any other purpose; it is secure and is never given out to anyone.

   However, I do look at the list occasionally, and when I do, I am always surprised at the number of subscribers who are government employees (quite a few of them do use their government e-mail addresses). I am curious to know why they have subscribed to this blog, since it is geared to the "other side" -- writing proposals as opposed to reviewing proposals or preparing solicitations. Perhaps they are just curious themselves, or maybe they are preparing for a career change into the private or non-profit sectors. Or maybe they just want to learn what it's like to be on the other side.

   Whatever the reason, I think we could learn a lot from these folks. So, government subscribers, I invite you to speak up! Make comments to some of the blog posts. Or if you have a topic that you'd like to write about, send me an e-mail and I'll arrange for it to be posted on the blog. In either case, you don't have to give your name, e-mail address or agency if you don't want to.

   I know you're out there. So give us your thoughts from the government perspective.

   (12/12/06 08:42 AM)

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