We’ve recently been talking about this topic quite a bit in a few recent episodes of the Nonprofit SnapCast. Nonprofits play a crucial role in shaping public policy and advocating for social change. With their unique perspectives and expertise, they can drive meaningful conversations and influence decision-makers at local, state, and national levels. Here’s how nonprofits can effectively engage in advocacy and make a significant impact.

In the nonprofit sector, staff are often the most vital asset. Their dedication, skills, and effectiveness can significantly influence the organization’s impact and success. However, understanding and measuring staff strength can be complex. This guide will explore various dimensions and metrics for measuring nonprofit staff strength to help you build a more effective and resilient team. 

We ended up writing four installments for this series, knowing that one could get a lot more granular in our examination of these issues.  Please tell us what else you think we should cover when talking about mismanagement and its remedies.  The four installments:

This is the final installment on our "Nonprofit Mismanagement" blog series.

Addressing nonprofit mismanagement involves implementing solutions and best practices across various aspects of the organization. Here are some key strategies to improve management and prevent issues:

The consequences of nonprofit mismanagement can be significant and wide-ranging, affecting various aspects of the organization and its mission. Here are some potential impacts:

Understanding the causes of nonprofit mismanagement can help in addressing and preventing it. Nonprofit mismanagement can result from a range of factors that undermine an organization's effectiveness and efficiency. Some common causes include:

Nonprofit organizations play a vital role in addressing societal needs, from supporting the underprivileged to advancing scientific research. However, like any sector, nonprofits are not immune to mismanagement, which can undermine their mission and impact. Understanding nonprofit mismanagement, its causes, and potential solutions is crucial for ensuring that these organizations operate effectively and ethically.

A nonprofit organization’s board of directors is instrumental in guiding its mission and ensuring effective governance. A strong, effective board can be the difference between success and stagnation. Evaluating the strength of a nonprofit board is crucial for maximizing its impact and ensuring long-term success. This article explores Evaluating Nonprofit Board Strength: Key Metrics and Best Practices for assessing board effectiveness and strength.

In the world of nonprofits and social enterprises, there's a persistent myth that an organization’s success can be distilled into a single metric: the ratio of overhead to program spending. This outdated measure, often cited by donors and evaluators, suggests that organizations with lower overhead costs are more efficient and thus more effective. However, this simplistic view overlooks the true drivers of impact and can mislead both funders and organizations themselves. It’s time we reframe how we measure success and focus on what really matters: achieving meaningful goals.

[*With apologies to the image creator. This image inspired this post.]

You know this already, but I feel compelled to write about it: Nonprofit organizations are dedicated to making a positive impact on society by addressing social, cultural, and environmental issues. To achieve their mission and goals, nonprofits need to have a clear and effective strategic plan. A strategic plan is a roadmap that guides an organization in achieving its long-term objectives while aligning its resources, activities, and priorities. In this blog, we'll discuss the importance of nonprofit strategic planning and the key elements of a successful strategic plan.

Being an executive director can be a rewarding job, but it can also be incredibly stressful and demanding. As the leader of a nonprofit organization, an executive director is responsible for everything from fundraising and program development to staff management and board relations. With so many responsibilities and a constant need to balance competing priorities, it's no wonder that executive director burnout is a common problem.

Online fundraising is a popular method for earning donations used by individual fundraisers and nonprofits alike. These campaigns leverage well-designed websites, livestreaming platforms, social media, and other digital tools to raise money for their causes in a fast and effective way.

But if you’ve yet to make the move to virtual strategies, you might be asking yourself why online fundraising matters for organizations like yours. Perhaps you feel as if you’ve made do with traditional fundraising strategies for this long, so there’s no reason to shake things up now. However, thesemodern fundraising ideas and resources have the power to bring your campaigns to the next level. 

Let’s say you’ve launched a capital campaign to renovate your nonprofit’s facility. At the beginning of the project, you secure a handful of major donors who will support the larger financial costs of the investments. Months later, with lots of hard work, you’ve raised the rest of the funds from mid-level and smaller donors and, after a year of construction, the project is finally completed. 

However, as you’re about to cut the ribbon to unveil the renovation, you look around and notice that some of the major givers who you connected with early on in the project have not made an appearance. In fact, you realize, you haven’t had many conversations with them in months. 

In the virtual age, it’s not just Millennials and Gen Z who are using technology to stay connected. Virtual interactions are a fact of life for all demographics. So much of daily life, from work to socializing to shopping, now takes place online, and that includes many aspects of nonprofit management. 

As a volunteer coordinator, that means you must adjust your volunteer engagement strategy to continue connecting with supporters in a digital-first environment. This has become especially important both during the height and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic since you more than likely reduced your in-person activities to keep volunteers and staff members safe. 

How many times have you been told a fact, only to forget it by the next day? For example, we could tell you something like “squirrels are behind the most power outages in the U.S.” (it’s true!), which you mightremember, only because it’s odd. However, you’re way more likely to remember that fact if we told you a story about a squirrel named Larry who wreaked havoc on the American power grid, which led to the realization that squirrels do indeed cause a shockingly high number of power outages nationwide. 

You get the point: stories are more memorable. And it’s proven! According to cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner, stories are 22 times more memorable than just stating a fact. 

So how is this research relevant to your nonprofit?Well, it means that you can build stronger and more meaningful relationships with your website visitors by harnessing the power of storytelling. 

Fundraising for your nonprofit is about more than money — it’s also about inspiring donors to make a difference with their contributions. Your donors don’t want to feel like an ATM. They want to know that their funds are impacting real people. 

Through storytelling, you can convey this impact and more, especially if you bring stories to your website. However, you’ve got to do it right, so we’ve put together some tips to help. When using your website to share meaningful stories about your work, you should: 

• Identify your characters
• Integrate stories throughout your website
• Use lots of images
• Remember that your story doesn’t have to be finished

Picture this: You decide to donate to a nonprofit that’s piqued your interest and sit down, phone in hand, to complete your transaction. However, when you navigate to the nonprofit’s donation page, you have to click through to a third-party donation form that’s hard to read on your phone. You start to fill it out and realize it’s asking for a lot of your personal information and is going to take you a lot longer than you thought. Instead of donating to this nonprofit, you decide to abandon your donation and look for another organization to give to. It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting a nonprofit or you’ve been running your organization for years—you know that your success relies on effective fundraising. And a huge part of fundraising today is not only driving donors to your online donation page but keeping them there. This is where the design and functionality of your donation page can be a huge asset to facilitate as many donations as possible. To help you optimize your own nonprofit donation page, we’ve organized the following essential strategies:

• Pay attention to design.
• Embed your donation form.
• Use a reliable payment processor.
• Provide other engagement opportunities.

Eager to learn more about how you can make the most of your online giving form to maximize donations and engagement? Let’s dive in.

There are plenty of ways to raise funds and awareness, but one of the most popular strategies is fundraising events that focus on donor engagement. Auctions are a tried-and-true way to connect with donors and simultaneously raise funds for your cause. Adding engagement strategies in your next auction can bring your event to the next level. We will dive into 5 strategies you can implement in your next fundraising auction to drive deeper donor engagement:

• Leverage Ambassador Fundraising.
• Procure Great Items.
• Price Your Items Fairly.
• Ensure It's Easy To Bid On And Receive Items.
• Make Your Auction Part of Another Event.

Most nonprofit professionals, whether you’ve just started or have been in the nonprofit sector for a long time, are familiar with form 990. This end-of-year tax form can be quite daunting, even for seasoned professionals, but especially if you’ve only just become acquainted with it. Form 990s are very important for ensuring that your nonprofit maintains its tax exempt status and is legally recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. While it can be complicated to know which version of the form is the right one for your organization and how to fill it out, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to complete it on time. In this guide, we’ll start from the beginning to make sure everyone is on the same page about what the Form 990 is and why it’s important. Then, we’ll dive into deadlines, strategies you can use to ensure you meet deadlines, consequences if you miss deadlines, and next steps for your nonprofit. We’ll cover all of this important tax-season information by answering the following questions:

The average American picks up their phone 96 times a day, or once every 10 minutes. For most of us, this equates to hours of scrolling through social media, checking email, and staying in touch with family members and friends. For nonprofit organizations, this represents an effective way to engage with supporters amid the ongoing pandemic. Since most in-person events have been canceled or modified in some way, nonprofits have expanded their digital and mobile fundraising capabilities to engage supporters remotely. This includes exploring text fundraising opportunities that allow organizations to connect with supporters directly on their mobile devices. According to Double the Donation’s nonprofit fundraising statistics, half of last year’s nonprofit website traffic came from mobile and tablet users. This demonstrates the crucial importance of connecting with supporters on mobile devices, and text fundraising is a great way to do exactly that. In this quick guide, we’ll review everything you need to know about text fundraising, including:

Monthly giving programs provide your nonprofit with reliable revenue throughout the year. When compared to other fundraising initiatives, monthly giving may seem like it takes a “set-it-and-forget-it approach.” However, growing your monthly giving program to maximize its benefits takes dedicated time and investment. Knowing the program will earn regular donations once it’s established can be freeing for some nonprofits, but it may make other fundraising professionals assume that they can’t actively expand their monthly giving program further. As an incredibly valuable source of income, your monthly giving program is worth additional investment to ensure it’s achieving its maximum potential. Keeping in mind that monthly donors tend to increase their value over time, your nonprofit can take additional steps to attract more monthly donors and earn more from the supporters currently enrolled in your program. To help your nonprofit expand your monthly giving program, this article will explore five key tips including:

How to Build a Foolproof Volunteer Communications Strategy

Every organization that relies on the hard work of volunteers understands just how important it is to foster a connected and motivated team. Communicating with volunteers has become more important than ever since 2020 and is essential to increasing volunteer engagement and retention. Effective communication strategies can greatly impact your organization's ability to cultivate long-term and meaningful relationships with volunteers. Creating these long-term relationships will not only help your nonprofit retain volunteers, but it can also help inspire those volunteers to donate more time and even money towards your cause. In this quick guide, we’ll offer some foolproof volunteer communication strategies to help you foster meaningful long-term relationships with your volunteers:

It’s time for a pop quiz! Yes, this is a pop quiz for our organization’s board members. You can download a PDF of this pop quiz here.

This quiz will gauge an individual board member’s engagement to the organization.  Of course, this isn’t scientific.  But it may serve as a good tool to spark the conversation about what drives the nonprofit, how to deepen the connection between the board member and what really drives the org, and perhaps to invigorate the passion you want board members to have for your cause. 

Quickly answer these yes/no questions:

This is my second quarterly update for 2021.  I've got seven quick updates for you this time:

1. If you have a podcast, may I be a guest on your show? Send me a note, and let’s set it up.

Fundraising vs. Development 

What’s the difference between fundraising and development? Some people say it’s just a matter of semantics. They may be right. But I think there’s a distinction that’s worth noting.

Fundraising vs. Development

Fundraising is transactional. It is the transaction of asking for and receiving a gift. Fundraising asks tend to happen on a timeline determined by the organization.

Development is relational. It is the process of developing relationships with donors for long-term, organizational benefit. Gifts may bind the donor to your organization over the entire span of the relationship. This timeline is defined by the donor.