Allison Fine researches and writes about the intersection of social media and social change. She is the co-author (with Beth Kanter) of the bestselling book, The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, as well as the award-winning Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age. She hosts a monthly podcast for The […]
#FUNDRAISING: Consider Moving Some Online Donors To Direct Mail Giving
Social networks can be so important for communicating with folks who support (or will support) your cause. The high speed and low cost of such outreach can offer huge dividends, but mostly those dividends are paid in good will and spurring interest. Online donations are certainly growing, but as a report from Blackbaud this year […]
#INTERVIEW: Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 Communications, Discusses Why Nonprofits Need to Embrace Video
Michael Hoffman is co-founder and CEO of See3 Communications and a leading authority on online video for nonprofits and online fundraising and outreach strategies. After turns as a political consultant and developer of Internet startups, he founded See3 to bring together his vision of the web and his passion for nonprofit fundraising. The interview was […]
#SM4NP: Scoop.it! For Information ‘Curation’ & Social Interaction
Last year we explored Pinterest, a social network that puts a premium on visuals and offers ‘pin boards’ of topics collected/bookmarked/’pinned’ by the user. The metrics on the platform show amazing growth over the last few months, and many are still waiting for an invitation to join up. Scoop.it! has, on the surface, a strikingly […]
#VIDEO: The Knowledge Fountain Promos
The Challenge: The Knowledge Fountain offers not-for-profit organizations a spectrum of short courses online covering fundraising, communications, organizational development, social media, and productivity software. It is a start-up venture co-founded by MKCREATIVE owner, Marco Kathuria and Don Akchin, of Don Akchin Strategic Marketing. The startup was looking for a cost-effective way to tell it’s story […]
#SOCIALMEDIA: It’s OK To Say ‘No’ To Your Social Networks
You know you want to… We are often extolling the virtues of particular social-networking platforms or encouraging specific strategies to reach out to your audience(s) across these platforms. When moving through the ‘tubes’ of our social networks, it is easy to think that each post we prepare is the most important one ever and that […]
#HOWTO: Tweak Your Organization’s Facebook Site For Graph Search
In February, 2013, we talked about what Facebook’s latest feature, Graph Search, is (namely, a way to combine keywords, categories, and what friends are saying about them within Facebook) and it is not (namely, a challenger to Google’s search algorithms across the internet). In this article, we want to help you and your organization make […]
#FUNDRAISING: Paul Jolly Inspires The Big Ask To Raise Big Money
We welcome back Paul Jolly, Director of Jump Start Growth, Inc., a nonprofit fundraising and consultancy in Washington DC. Today, Paul tells about the importance of breaking the donor-donation barrier. Many good therapists will tell you your achievements are limited only by your attitude. Organizations, as well as individuals, may have a mindset that limits what they […]
#HOWTO: Taking Photographs with a Film Camera is Easier than Ever!
I’ll not wax poetic here, this is exactly what it says on the tin: if you are shooting with a film camera, or just thinking about it, read on. This article is for you. Get A Vintage Camera Vintage film cameras can be surprisingly affordable but, depending on the source, often require repair or adjustment. […]
#HOWTO: Establish A Tumblr Account & Why You Should Do So (VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PUXnDZUcQY[/embed]
A while back we talked about the blogging platform Tumblr, and the series got a great deal of response from you our audience, and we really appreciate your interest and feedback! We want to step up that earlier discussion with a series of video how-tos that will show you a Tumblr account, what can be […]
#HOWTO: Setup A (Free) Scoop.it Magazine For Your Community
We introduced Scoop.it and Pinterest recently because we think these information-sharing sites offer a great platform for nonprofits and charities to share their own news as well as related images or stories in their sectors. As promised we have returned to round out this mini-series with a guide to help you setup a Scoop.it e-magazine site. […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Is Pinterest Of Value For Nonprofits? You Bet!
Pinterest can seem like an upmarket yard sale at first glance… One of the hottest discussions about social-networking platforms concerns Pinterest, whose membership and engagement have exploded in 2014. From January to February of this year alone, Pinterest drew over 100 million new visitors to its site. The simplicity of setting up ‘boards’ and […]
#HOWTO: Curate Information To Make Sense Of Your Nonprofit’s Ambitions
‘Content Curation’ is one of the essential concepts when it comes to preparing and writing stories for online consumption. The term refers to the activity of collecting, sharing, and responding to information on the internet in a consistent and focused manner. A ‘curator’ is traditionally defined as “a keeper or custodian of a museum or […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: What Makes Pinterest So Engaging? It’s So Simple.
Pinterest was released as a private beta in March 2010, which makes it something of a late-comer (or the ‘second generation?) of social networking platforms. Its mission was “to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting,” and its modus operandi was to encourage people to ‘pin’ whatever they found interesting online […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Let Flickr Tell Your Nonprofit’s Story As It Happens
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A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. And with digital social media, images are becoming both more common and more powerful as platforms such as Facebook and Google+ emphasize the photo and graphic qualities of their social-media networks. A kind of ‘visual economy’ is developing, within which social networks are competing and users […]
#MARKETING: NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan Fundraiser
Social Marketing and Media Relations Campaign Working under the aegis of the Nonprofit Marketing 360 collaborative, MKCREATIVE and LCG Communications embarked on an ambitious campaign to promote an online silent auction for a client. We used a combination of PR (LCG Communications) and social marketing (MKC). Our client, NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, sought […]
#HOWTO: Plan A Film Screening/Festival As A Fundraising Opportunity
As the year’s projects and fundraisers and festivals start rolling onto your computer’s calendar, you might be looking for an opportunity to host a one-off event that can bring much-wanted PR, good karma, and even some financial support. How about sponsoring a film screening? (MKCREATIVEmedia co-produced a film festival for one of our clients earlier […]
#VIDEO: Compass Academy Promo Videos
The Challenge: Compass Academy is a community of students, educators, and families dedicated to serving children of average to above average cognitive ability with a wide range of learning challenges including autism spectrum, ADHD, speech, language, and/or motor delays. A lack of funds to plough into marketing the school meant that outreach and engagement has […]
#NEWS: THE KNOWLEDGE FOUNTAIN LAUNCHES ONLINE CLASSES & SOCIAL SITE EXCLUSIVELY FOR NONPROFITS
http://youtu.be/ajF0oSL3qrI
The latest entry in the rapidly-evolving distance learning education market is a new online education service geared exclusively to people who work for nonprofit organizations. The Knowledge Fountain, which launched today, is offering a spectrum of courses online covering fundraising, communications, organizational development, social media, and productivity software. The site pitches its product as “just […]
#MEETUP: Join Us For The inaugural PechaKucha Night In Baltimore On October 24th
Join us at a unique event organized by Sidas Saulynas, Hillel Glazer, and Marco Kathuria in Baltimore later this month. It’s called, “PechaKucha”. You may have heard of it. It’s the art of concise presentations. If not, you may have heard of “Ignite“? They’re similar, but Ignite has a different goal to that of […]
#FILMFESTIVAL: Green Guerillas Film Festival (2013)
The Challenge: Green Guerillas asked us to act as creative and marketing consultants and be co-producers of an environmental film festival in New York City at the Museum of the Moving Image, We had limited time and resources in which to both market the event and to produce it. Our Solution: MKCREATIVE co-developed a strategic […]
#SOCIALMEDIA: Facebook Quietly Rolls Out ‘Gifts’ & Nonprofits Can Get Them Too
Over this past spring Facebook has been expanding its Gifts service as a way to offer presents to family and friends. The service can be activated by clicking on the bowed gift box that appears on your organization’s News Feed or on the page of the person or nonprofit you want to give the gift […]
#FUNDRAISING: Outreach Tactics & Technologies Need To Adjust To Demographics
With the texts and tweets and the touchscreens and with those crazy(-cool) Google goggles and whatnot, a nonprofit would be daft to send those old-fashioned appeals by mail. The cost of printing and stamps, the hassle of upkeep of a database of address, the imposition of making potential donors find their checkbooks buried ever-farther into […]
#ADVOCACY: Google Does Harm To Privacy & Suffers An Hour’s Income For Infractions
What you think about Google’s (and Facebook’s. And Twitter’s…) efforts to collect personal information of its users probably says quite a bit about what you think about human nature: If you don’t mind a database of your online activities being used by social networks and search engines, then you are likely comfortable with the fact […]
#DEVELOPMENT: How Much Cash Is Required To Land A Donation?
How often do nonprofits reach out to donors potential and actual online, yet have no real sense of how successful the outreach was? Did the time and money spent developing a program or launching a campaign prove to be worth the support? Dan Norris, founder of the online-analytics service Informly offers a tool to help […]
#FUNDRAISING: Causevox Improves Online Outreach & Fundraising To 2.0
We have often sung the praises of the online charity-site platform Causevox. And we do so again as the good folks at Causevox have released a significant series of upgrades and integrations in version 2.0. It moved out of beta last week, allowing any charity or nonprofit to take advantage of the expanding toolbox. This […]
#PHILANTHROPY: Zuckerberg’s Millions Suggest New Style Of Giving By Young
Mark Zuckerberg always makes headlines, and few were as stunning as the ones he made in the fall of 2010 when he donated $100 million to the Newark, NJ school system − a system with which he has no personal connections whatsoever. His generosity was intended to help right the ship of one of the statistically […]
#OPINION: Ken Stern’s Book Offers Tough Love To Nonprofit Economy
Ken Stern has served as CEO of National Public Radio, arguably one of the best-known nonprofits in the country. He supports The American Red Cross, and has served on the boards of a number of charities. So when his book, And Charity for All argues that the nonprofit sector is a huge part of the […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Pew Research Keeps Us Up With Changing Faces of Internet
The latest surveys carried out by the Pew Internet and American Life Project are tracking both the most popular online social-networking platforms and the kinds of people who are using them. We enjoy sharing such findings with our readers because the information the folks at the Pew Internet group can help nonprofits refine their online […]
#SOCIALNETWORK: Are You Prepped For Rollout Of Facebook Graph Search?
Facebook’s Graph Search was announced a couple of weeks ago and it is being rolled out through the Facebook0sphere through February. Though many wondered if Facebook were challenging Google, the fact is Facebook is trying to rejigger how you can access information within Facebook, not how you wend your way through the tubes of the internet. […]
#PHILANTHROPY: #Sundance & A3 Foundation Extend Cooperation for Asian-American Artists
Though the Initial Public Offering of Facebook devolved into comic fodder last May, the fact remains that it made many people quite wealthy − especially those who had been working with Zuckerberg’s company from the early days. A number of those who cashed out their stocks and jobs at the social-network giant have since turned toward […]
#SOCIALNETWORKS: Questions & Answers Can Be Shared On Quora
The Latin term ‘quorum’ (pl.pronoun: ‘of whom’) has almost no connection to what the term means in Anglo-American law, namely: “the minimum number of members of an assembly that must be present to make the proceedings of that meeting valid.” Without digging too deeply into the Oxford English Dictionary, the term evolved from Norman circuit […]