Held July 20-22, the Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference proved to once again be a valuable resource to direct marketing professionals.  If you weren’t able to attend, I urge you to check out the Conference website – presentations are available for download.

















Photos Courtesy of Mark Van Bergh Photography

Oh yes … great stuff out there about Facebook: golden rules from nonprofit digital media professionals who actively manage their social media programs, more on QR codes and how they can be applied to your program, an innovative monthly donor recruitment tool, an update on mobile giving with an international view, and Blackbaud’s Index of Charitable Giving.

In an effort to define benchmarking performance for Avalon’s clients – and our specific markets – Avalon has compiled 2011 online fundraising performance metrics for our clients and compared them to the 2011 benchmarking numbers from The eNonprofit Benchmarks Study (by M+R Strategic Services and NTEN) and The Convio Online Nonprofit Benchmark™ Study. The results are pretty impressive.

We’re thrilled to report some exciting Avalon news: the Galapagos Conservancy has won a Gold Direct Marketing Association of Washington MAXI (Marketing Awards for Excellence and Innovation) and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has won a Silver MAXI in the “workhorse” category. Congratulations to everyone on these teams for two innovative and successful campaigns!  How did they do it?

There are few things more valuable to a nonprofit’s fundraising potential than the integrity of its data.  For if our data isn’t clean and complete, how can we distinguish with certainty between a donor who has given 12 times over a lifetime vs one who has given only twice?  Clearly the way we recognize those two donors should differ … the way we interact with those donors … the way we solicit those donors.

Yet, I’ve recently witnessed a disturbing trend that ultimately negates the value of understanding one’s data, and therefore one’s donor file … and it’s happening during the database conversion process.

Do you remember where you were, what you were doing, what life was like 14 years ago … back in 1997?  We do!

If you’re as confused as ever on how to tackle social media for your organization you’re not alone … many nonprofits struggle with where to begin.  In order to separate fact from fiction, I recently attended DMAW’s Social Media Marketing Day with several Avalon colleagues.  Billed as “it’s not just tactics – it’s strategy” we came away with some great recommendations on how to build lasting relationships with fans, tools on how to actually execute (and track) a social media campaign, and how best to move forward after failure.