A soft economy is bad news for almost everyone, but nonprofits are hit especially hard when things get tough. That's because they don't just have the normal declines in available income to contend with, but also the added pressures of lowered portfolio values, which can lead foundations and wealthy donors to substantially reduce the size of their annual gifts—or even eliminate them altogether.

Even the traditional economic appeal of giving, a lower tax burden, is rendered somewhat moot when there aren't as many high wage earners and soaring investment accounts to draw from. …Read More

Google the word "branding" and you won't just get thousands of results, you'll get hundreds of thousands. And yet, more than 99% of them will apply to the corporate world, or maybe to small businesses… branding just isn't a concept that's talked about a lot, or enough, in nonprofit circles.  …Read More

In today’s digital age, most would agree that their website is a primary marketing tool. Ten years ago, you were cutting edge if you had a website…and it was probably basic HTML with little modern appeal. Now, people want to interact with the site, see stuff move, and distribute information. While I’ve never been a fan of complete Flash websites, having a little Flash here and there doesn’t hurt your SEO.

In my web hunts recently, I found a few really cool tools that could really be helpful to businesses and organizations, for little or no cost. The three that I want to share with you are SnackTools, SlideShare and Issuu, which cover online Flash tools and document sharing. All of their products can be embedded on your website. …Read More

As the year is coming to a close, several companies begin to gear up for the new year marketing strategy. One goal is to get more web traffic. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t necessarily apply to websites. If you don’t let people (or search engines) know that you have built it, your traffic levels will be dismal. …Read More

The lights are dimmed. The auditorium is full. The big screen is filled with bright colors. Then here it comes, the never-ending list of bullet points, which the presenter is reading to you one-by-one. And you? Your eyes are feeling heavy. Your head is dropping slowly, but then jolts up like a yo-yo! Oh, the guilt and shame we feel for falling asleep on what could have been an awesome presentation. We’ve all been there. Once you see the first array of bullets hit the screen, you sink into your seat and brace yourself for a brain-numbing ride. Or maybe this is sounding too familiar. Maybe YOU were the presenter! Queue the dark organ music! …Read More