Tag: Shonali Burke

Your Baby Is Ugly

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

One of the great things about being a consultant is that we get to tell people when their baby is ugly without them getting mad at us – hey, they’re PAYING us to tell them when their baby is ugly.

Well, your (campaign) baby is ugly.

But it’s not your fault!

Marketing automation makes it easy for us to “set it and forget it!”

You set up the campaign, and your AMS and automation software run in the background, sending notices out on time and to everyone who still hasn’t renewed/registered for the meeting/bought the webinar or book.

But those highly automated campaigns aren’t compelling. They don’t tell a story. They aren’t personal. They don’t make a connection. Because of that, they often don’t live up to expectations.

Fundraisers are experts at doing all of those things. They have to be. They’re not asking for people to give them money to get a direct personal benefit (a membership, a conference experience, professional development, knowledge). They’re asking people to give them money for some sort of greater good. And they do it really well.

How? Is it magic? Do you have to know the secret Association of Fundraising Professionals handshake?

You do not – you, too, can run a compelling, visually-arresting, emotionally- motivating, effective campaign. Find out how in the latest Spark whitepaper, Steal This Idea! Innovations in Cause-Oriented Fundraising for Associations freely available for download at https://bit.ly/3eu6ntm. Pay special attention to the interview with Shonali Burke on the three keys to effective campaigns on pages 8-10, the sidebar by John Haydon on using social media effectively to promote your campaigns, and to the stories of CompTIA and New Endeavors by Women on pages 19-22.

 

Steal This Idea!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past 20 years, it’s that associations don’t always have all the answers. We definitely have some major advantages, not the least of which is that we are highly cooperative and collaborative, not least of which because there’s not a lot of intra-industry competition (i.e., the AICPA and the American Nurses Association have basically zero overlap in audiences). But there are some areas where we lag, and where other industries, say charitable fundraisers, do things better than we do.

That’s the topic of the latest Spark whitepaper, Steal This Idea! Innovations in Cause-Oriented Fundraising for Associations. Written with Sohini Baliga, a communications expert from the charitable fundraising world who’s recently come over to the association side of non-profits, Steal Like a Fundraiser addresses three major areas where charities are innovating and shares their secrets of success:

  • Building relationships with donors at all levels, with a special focus on major donors, and how that relates to membership relationship building and management
  • Creating and running outstanding campaigns
  • Attracting Millennial/young professional supporters

The whitepaper also features contributions from Beth Kanter, John Haydon, and Shonali Burke and case studies from:

I’ll be blogging about the whitepaper for the rest of the week, highlighting some key findings and action steps you can take, but in the meantime, I invite you to download your free copy at https://bit.ly/3eu6ntm – we don’t collect any data on you to get it, and you won’t end up on some mailing list you didn’t ask for. We just use the bit.ly as an easy mechanism to count the number of times it’s been downloaded.

And don’t forget to check out the other FREE Spark whitepapers, too: