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Your donors

Posted on May 12, 2012 by in Direct Mail, Graphic Design, John Lepp, Social Media, Writing

This is simple stuff. And our pal Tom Ahern reminded me of that in a recent tweet. I’d like you to print this off and put it on your wall every time you think you are ready to mail/call/tweet/blast your donors because your fancy schmancy schedule tells you to.    

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Opt-In/Opt-Out

Posted on April 9, 2012 by in Branding, Case Study, John Lepp, Opinion, Social Media

This past Friday, April 6th, 2012, CBC marketplace ran an episode called The Busted Edition. You can see it here in its entirety. In this episode, CBC turned its attention to World Vision Canada and how they recently notified their donors that their monthly gift will be upgraded from $35/month to $39/month due to increased costs, [...]

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Surprise and Delight

Posted on March 6, 2012 by in Case Study, Direct Mail, Fun, Graphic Design, John Lepp, Writing

I wish I had a dollar for every time I had someone say to me, “Yah, but we could never do the Ruby pack.” I really do, because I’d be rich. What’s that? What’s the Ruby pack? Ok. Let me back track a little. The Ruby pack was a mailing we came up with for [...]

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8 Simple Rules for Cookies (and Fundraising)

Posted on January 30, 2012 by in Direct Mail, Fun, Jen Love, Writing

“Hi. I’m Agent Jen Love and I’m a cookie addict.” (sympathetic nods from readers) Baking is fussy. I’m not. But I do find a form of Zen in the precise measuring and finicky instructions. And last week I created the perfect chewy chocolate chip cookie. All that’s left of the first delicious batch are crumbs [...]

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The new partnership

Posted on January 6, 2012 by in John Lepp, Opinion

2012 is going to be the year of positive change. It needs to be because the sector deserves it, you deserve it and your donors deserve it. The change should start with your partnerships. The people, the agencies and suppliers you choose to work with every single day. Time after time, we hear about promises [...]

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A Year-end Rant from the Usually Good-Natured “Godfather of Good”

Posted on January 2, 2012 by in David Love, Direct Mail, Social Media, Writing

Over the final week 2011, I received almost identical emails from some of my favorite charities asking for money. Not one of them took the time to recognize that I was a monthly donor. That made me angry. I am so engaged with their mission that I give them something every single month to do [...]

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Sadie and Santa

Posted on December 21, 2011 by in Direct Mail, Fun, Jen Love, Opinion, Uncategorized, Writing

Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”); Sadie checks our mail every day. She’s four. Excuse me, four and a half. Once a month she gets her Chirp Magazine. Big day. She gets, reads, re-reads and covets the postcards from my parents when they travel. That’s about it. But she charges to the mailbox every day, chattering about our [...]

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Dear “Foundation”…

Posted on December 19, 2011 by in Branding, Case Study, Direct Mail, Graphic Design, Opinion, Social Media, Writing

Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”); Dear “Foundation”… Can I offer some friendly advice? Next time you decide to send out an eblast can you: – not send it as a jpg (which gets put into spam boxes, makes all of your links useless, make the piece very hard to read, makes the email size too big, doesn’t [...]

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Saying thanks….

Posted on December 1, 2011 by in Uncategorized

Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”); It’s not really that hard, yet so few charities do it well, or in some cases, not at all. There are some great sources out there for ways to thank you to your donors (here is a recent nonprofit carnival blog post about it via Pamela Grow) but today I want to [...]

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In defence of Joan, Jane and Mary

Posted on November 22, 2011 by in Branding, Direct Mail, John Lepp

We know these amazing people. Joan is the one who has been volunteering with you for… like ever. She comes into your building day after day, she has organized small committee’s, rallied the troops to make sure the little (and big) events come together, she brings her friends to help out when they can. She [...]

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