Glenn's blog
This Wednesday, October 27, Harvey joins Michael Johnston for the exciting webinar Master Class: 25 Ways to Kick-Start Your Cross Channel Fundraising.
Learn how you can make your fundraising more effective by using multiple channels, including web, social media, direct mail, telephone, and mobile. These innovative techniques allow your organization to raise more money and improve donor relationships. Go beyond traditional databases and evolve your methods to reach more donors in more places.
Visit CentrePoint thecentrepoint.ca/training/cour_master_class.html to register.
A couple of weeks ago a local group organized a bake sale to raise money to pay for the spaying, neutering, and relocation of over 1,500 rabbits from the University of Victoria Campus – in response to the University’s plan to kill the majority of the rabbits to reduce their population.
The event was put together entirely by volunteers – and in the end it raised around $8,300.
As far as bake sales go, this one is the most successful I have heard of. Bake sales are the epitome of grassroots fundraising, and usually raise anywhere between a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand.
Why was this particular bake sale so successful?
I think it really goes back to some fundamentals of fundraising:
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.
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.
After many hours of deliberation we’ve finally made our selection of the charities who will be taking part in our first Goodstock.
We’ll be spending 24 hours working on lots of different projects for them all.
We love small nonprofits. You're out there, doing important work on limited budgets, making a real difference.
There are probably a lot of things you don't do because you don't have the money to hire experts to help you.
Maybe you could benefit from help sorting out your yearly fundraising plan? Maybe you could use some help with designing a killer mail pack? Maybe you'd like to plan and shoot a promotional video or get an online fundraising program going?
This December, to celebrate the season of giving, we're getting our staff together to do a 24-hour marathon of free fundraising and marketing projects for small nonprofits. Would you like to tap into our expertise and experience and have fun as well? If you have a project that could use a kick-start take a look at the proposal requirements and send your idea along.
Remember, it all has to fit in 24 hours of work. But a lot can get done in 24 hours.
Because we’ll be working with local nonprofits, you can actually come into the office, brief us personally, and work with us on your project.
This whole idea is based on "Goodstock™", a project by Knupp & Watson. Thanks to them for the great idea! We’re proud to be the 1st Canadian agency launching our own Goodstock.
If you have any questions, please visit www.harveymckinnon.com/goodstock. The deadline for project submissions is 2 pm PST on November 13.
The fine folks over at Ecojustice have just launched their new Stop Soot! campaign, which aims to convince the Canadian government to take action on black carbon. Here's what the new campaign website has to say:
Soot, also known as black carbon, is the second-leading cause of global warming after carbon dioxide, and it's totally preventable. We already have the technology to avoid producing it; it's just a matter of using it.
We need tighter standards on diesel fuel at home, and we need to finance technology transfer abroad. Addressing black carbon is a climate change solution that Canada can and should lead. Please do your part to help.
This campaign was originally developed by Earthjustice in the US (stopsoot.com) and Ecojustice has created a Canadian version so that we can pressure our government into taking action on this issue.
