Harvey McKinnon Associates is a consultancy specializing in fundraising, relationship building, and direct response for the nonprofit community. With offices in Vancouver and Toronto, we offer services to clients around the world.
Our mission is to increase the income and stability of our nonprofit clients by building donor loyalty. We believe our work can make a difference in the world, and we use our skills in raising money to help nonprofit organizations accomplish their missions.
New HMA-produced Video
for Vancouver General Hospital Campaign
Watch our new video clip featuring Vancouver General Hospital patient Catharine Martin. The video is part of an integrated appeal campaign: direct mail with a drive to online plus an email follow up. Catharine is also using Twitter to fundraise to her personal network of family and friends. Check our HMA blog in late September for updates.
Latest from the blogs
There are a number of books available to help you understand this whole "social networking" thing – but none get to the heart of the matter with as much clarity and insight (and just plain good writing) as Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky.
For those of you without the time or the inclination to pick up the book, here's a video of Clay Shirky's keynote address at the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco:
We've had several discussions around the office about the implications of new social technologies for fundraising and nonprofits in general. It will be interesting to see if the practice of fundraising changes fundamentally in the coming years, as people become more connected with each other. Will fundraising become more social than it is now? Will we be able to give more directly to people in need?
With the advent of tools that facilitate organizing so well (and so cheaply and quickly) will experts who have traditionally been coordinated by large NGOs start to form their own groups and networks – bypassing the administrative overhead of the NGO?
20 years ago very few people would have said that a bunch of developers could just get together and make a world-class operating system without corporate backing or project managers and investors. But now we have Linux, running a large percentage of the servers which run the internet. The changes that enable people to come together directly and form structures that are looser than traditional models extends way beyond the tech world.
One of the microsites designed for the Battered Women's Support Services during Goodstock in Vancouver has gone live.
Visit the website and upload your pledge photo. Tell the world: the violence stops here.
Top 4 reasons why direct mail donors stay loyal
Looking at the reasons why direct mail donors have the best retention rates
We often hear – and say – that mail-acquired donors have the best retention rates. It’s one of those industry truisms that we follow, especially those amongst us who are direct mail geeks. However, it’s always important to periodically take a step back and question even the most established rules of thumb – take the time to ask why.
Recently, one of my colleagues did just that.
And here are the top reasons:
Maybe it’s because I’m approaching a big birthday, but I’ve been taking stock lately, and one of the things I realized was that I’ve been in fundraising now for over 15 years. Yikes! During the 15 years, I’ve spent 5 years ‘client-side’ and 10 years on the dark side sometimes known as the ‘agency.’ I’ve been in and around lots of incredibly successful client-agency relationships, and a few that were a bit trickier.
I honestly believe that the relationship between a non-profit and its consultants or agencies has a huge impact on results. So these are the ingredients that in my experience, make the happiest working relationship, and have the best chance of raising the most $ too:
Trust. Nothing works in life without it. I think that clients get the most out of their consultants when they truly believe the consultants have their best interests at heart, and aren’t just trying to make a profit. In turn, an agency that feels they don’t have the trust of their client will be constantly scrambling to make their client happy, rather than giving the realistic and sound advice that isn’t always popular.
The Power of Giving is launching a great initiative taken from Joseph Jaffe and Mitch Joel (thank you)... to raise money for relief efforts in Haiti.
We are auctioning Azim's "Power of Giving" keynote presentation with 100% of the proceeds going to Oxfam for Haiti Relief. The reserve has been set at $10.
If you want to place a "bid" please do so in the comment box under this blog. If you are the highest bidder, we will contact you once the bidding has ended. If you prefer to place a confidential bid, call us at 604-732-4351, extension 100 or e-mail info@thepowerofgiving.org.
Bidding ends Thursday, January 29nd at midnight.
Here is the fine print:
• Travel outside of Vancouver would be over and above.
• Copies of Azim's book, The Corporate Sufi to each participant (maximum 250 copies) will be included as a gift.
Challenge!
If you are a speaker/presenter, I challenge you to run a Keynote For A Cause event as well.
While you're at it, please donate $10 via www.oxfamamerica.org/ (in the US) or www.oxfam.ca/ (in Canada).
This morning Ecojustice announced a victory in Canada’s Supreme Court:
Today, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Canadian government has violated a national environmental law aimed at ensuring sustainable development. In a case centered on the proposed Red Chris mine in British Columbia, the Court ruled that the federal government cannot split projects into artificially small parts to avoid rigorous environmental assessments. The ruling also guarantees that the public will be consulted about major industrial projects, including large metal mines and tar sands developments.
Congratulations to Ecojustice on this victory. And a big thank you to Ecojustice and their lawyers as well for working so hard to hold the government accountable to the law in the service of protecting our environment.
I have said before, in every crisis there is an opportunity. And this crisis is no exception. In these times we are all called to be compassionate, and today, for Haiti, I hope you’ll be as generous as possible.
That is why I sent my donation to Oxfam. In this extreme time of need for Haiti, I ask that you do the same. As Haitians suffer tremendously right now, Oxfam is there helping them.
Please go to their website and give:
www.oxfam.ca
I worked at Oxfam for a decade and Oxfam is the best organization on the ground. They already have close to 200 staff in Haiti, including a special emergency response team. As Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam says: “When you send your gift, you’ll save lives. That's a simple fact. Your gift means life. Please send your gift today. And let me assure you, that even when the emergency is over, Oxfam will be there to help the people of Haiti rebuild their lives.”
Thanks for caring.
Photo credit: Diane Hernandez Corder/Oxfam
Spice Market (Mısır Çarşısı) Istanbul by flickr user exfordy
Not literally, obviously... unless you are using some sort of spice as a premium. In that case, yes, literally spice up your mail!
But, what I’d like to talk about are various techniques you can use to make each mail package you send to your donors a little bit different so that they are getting new and fresh packages from you. And hopefully this will mean that they get excited each time they hear from you, and hopefully respond often!
The most obvious ways to make each package different are to have different outer envelope, letter, and reply designs, premium package incentives (labels, cards, note pads...) and different stories. If you’re doing this and it’s working, then great!
However, I’d like to dig a little bit deeper than those common ‘ingredients’. Here are a few suggestions, or we can call them ‘spices’ to add to your DM spice rack, that might help to differentiate your appeals from your other appeals, and perhaps more importantly - from your competitor’s appeals.
The 24 hour marathon of good work for charities a huge success!
The definitive Goodstock HMA recap
HMA’s (and Canada’s) inaugural Goodstock 24-hour give-back event is now over. And what an amazing experience and wonderful success it was!
We invited charities from all over Vancouver and Toronto to send in applications telling us why they should be the recipients of 24 hours of free professional fundraising advice, design, copywriting, video web work and so much more.
Choosing was perhaps the most difficult part of the whole event, but we somehow narrowed it down to 4 Vancouver charities and 3 Toronto organizations.
Our new clients-for-a-day were:
In Vancouver:
- Battered Women’s Support Services
- Small Animal Rescue Society
- From Grief to Action
- L’Arche Greater Vancouver
In Toronto:
HMA Writes for Rights!
and you should too!
On International Human Rights Day HMA Vancouver and Toronto took some time to participate in Amnesty International's Write for Rights Day. With us internationally, individuals, friends, co-workers, families etc joined in on this succesful campaign lobbying leaders to condemn human rights abuses and promote justice and sending messages of hope to prisoners of conscience across the world.
While a majority of causes are international, two case studies focused on issues in Canada. We all wrote to Mr. Ignatieff asking him to support Bill-300 (and so should you!) to ensure that Canadian mining companies overseas respect human rights in the countries in which they are working. We also wrote to Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach asking him to ensure justice for the Lubicon Cree and their land rights struggle against oil and gas companies. Kudos to Amnesty for highlighting these local and urgent issues.
The combined efforts of HMA produced 62 letters and message of hope! Congrats team!
The Amnesty tally for letters written and sent so far is: 4425. Amazing!
More more info please visit or to participate next year, please visit:
www.amnesty.ca/writeathon/
