Welcome to the Nonprofit Partnership E-News

In this Issue

	May, 2009
	Surviving the Economic Downturn
	Getting Attention in a Crowded Marketplace
	Quick Takes – Making the Most of Your Online Presence
	The Nonprofit Partnership Annual Report Contest
	9th Annual NW PA Nonprofit Day - October 21

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Robert Wooler,
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May, 2009

This edition of The Nonprofit Partnership's e-news is sponsored by Malin, Bergquist, & Co. 

Surviving the Economic Downturn

From now through September 1, The Nonprofit Partnership will be focusing on strategies to help your organization survive and prosper in spite of the economy. This nine session series includes the following dates and topics:

May 12 - Sustainability: New Realities - New Approaches
May 26 - How Funders Think and How They Give
June 9 - Wanted---Individual Donors: Now More Than Ever
June 23 - Partnerships, Collaborations, and Mergers
July 7 - Marketing Maxims That Foster Corporate Sponsorships and Giving
July 21- How to Effectively Research Grant Opportunities
Aug 4 - Effective Grant Writing
Aug 18 - Understanding the Federal Economic Stimulus
Sep 1 - Grassroots Advocacy in Harrisburg and Washington DC

For more details on these workshops and for registration information, please visit The Nonprofit Partnership website.

Getting Attention in a Crowded Marketplace

If this not one of the most critical objectives we have to garner support, what is? Research suggests that the factor most related to having your message really connect with its intended audience is personalization. When the recipients of the information viewed it as having been created for them alone, they were likely to attend to it. Key factors in attention-getting include the following:

The message source was.....
1. Trustworthy or respected
2. Influential or powerful
3. Charismatic or appealing

The message context was....
1. Personalized (Directed to and about me-the recipient)
2. About a group the recipient belongs to or has interest in
3. Related to a question or issue they are concerned about

The message’s content was....
1. Concise, direct, or story-like in structure
2. Engaging to my senses
3. New, unusual, or unique

The recipient was....
1. Emotionally moved by the message
2. Able to consider the message’s implications or consequences
3. Convinced the message was important

Source: Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.

Quick Takes – Making the Most of Your Online Presence

• Ask in a variety of ways
Don’t put all your fundraising eggs in the internet basket. While online donors give more on the average and have higher incomes, almost 4 out of 10 never give another gift via the internet. So add online donors to your direct mail list and guard against the chances of losing that new donor.

• Turn your website into a marketing machine.
Guidestar and the Network for Good have packaged a lot of powerful entry-level information on tuning up your website for findability and getting in tune with social media. Take a few minutes to review their useful tips at  www.guidestar.org.

• Making the Most of Online Meetings
We can all agree that the frequency of conference calls, webinars, and the like is increasing rapidly, but how impressed are we with the quality of those meetings? Let’s face it – great in-person meetings are hard enough to pull off. For a revealing look at this area of our lives that is growing in importance, see  www.thegoodmancenter.com.

The Nonprofit Partnership Annual Report Contest

Because we believe so strongly that good organizational annual reports can be revealing proxies of an organization’s overall quality, the Nonprofit Partnership is hoping the stimulate the production of high quality annual reports with our 2009 Annual Report Contest and prizes of $2,500 for the best large organization annual report and $2,500 for the best one from a small nonprofit. Entries are due on August 28 and winners will be announced at the 2009 Northwest PA Nonprofit Day on October 21.

For more information, resources, and entry forms, visit the NPP website.
 

9th Annual NW PA Nonprofit Day - October 21

Please save the date of Wednesday, October 21 for the 9th Annual Northwest PA Nonprofit Day at the Bayfront Convention Center in Erie.  The day will feature 18 workshops in management, governance, fundraising, and marketing.  The keynote address will be offered by Peter Brinckerhoff, author of Generations: The Challenge of a Lifetime for Your Nonprofit.