Mal Warwick"s News Letter

Dear Ohdeuk, This autumn season features the usual offering of outstanding fundraising conferences, including the International Fundraising Congress, the Canadian Fundraising Congress, and Blackbaud’s Charleston Fundraising Conference. Increasingly, face-to-face educational opportunities in the fundraising field are cropping up online as well. The Resource Alliance, for one, is emerging as a major provider online. In collaboration with Forum for Fundraising, Resource Alliance will present the internationally renowned speaker and trainer Tony Elischer in a one-hour Webinar on October 16 at 2:00 pm Eastern time. Tony’s topic is "How to inspire and engage your donors for a lifetime." Click here to register. He’ll inspire you. Don’t miss it! And stay tuned for an outstanding lineup of world-class fundraising experts in the 2008 Resource Alliance Webinar Series. Cheers, mal   Download the PDF or view webpage here. In this Issue: 1. Spotlight on Success...Kiss Your Competitors 2. Ex-Patients 3. on Lists...Innovating with lists 4. Where's Mal? 5. Testing...How well does testing work? 6. Echo! 7. Tips & Timesavers 8. Hands on...Understanding online software 9. Charity? 10. Extra..."Charity badges"    Spotlight on Success... 1. Kiss Your Competitors By Bob Knight Ask 1000 charities what their number one concern is, and you’ll probably hear the same answer: the competition... Read more   2. Ex-Patients  You might think they’d be the most likely to give...but apparently that’s not the case... Read more On Lists 3. Innovating with lists By Suzie McGuire Make sure you’re taking full advantage of everyone who has expressed interest in your organization. In-house lists are less expensive and sometimes more productive than outside lists... Read more    4. Where's Mal? Join Mal in Toronto November 13-15 at the Canadian Fundraising Congress. Many consider this event to be the outstanding conference produced anywhere by a local chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Read more Testing 5. How well does testing work? By Mal Warwick For direct mail fundraisers, testing is the stuff of which great success stories are built, brick by brick. Uncounted millions of dollars have been raised as a result of careful, step-by-step improvements in direct mail list selection, suggested gift levels, premium offers, packaging, postage choices, and myriad other elements. But testing has its limits. And sometimes those limits can be downright discouraging... Read more   6. Echo! With so much focus on baby boomers and their patterns of giving or non-giving, you might want to get ready for those who follow in their footsteps... Read more   7. Tips & Timesavers “Typos improve response,” writes Jeff Brooks in Donor Power Blog. “I can’t prove this, but it seems to be true...” Read more  Hands on 8. Understanding online software By Michael Stein Nonprofits are finding more options for online software tools than ever before—tools that can help organizations communicate via e-mail, raise money, update their Web sites, conduct online advocacy campaigns, register people for events, and generally manage member and stakeholder information... Read more   9. Charity? Even though they have the least, poor Americans are also getting less from charity than you might imagine... Read more  Extra 10. "Chartiy Badges" By Lance Trebesch and Taylor Robinson This may work for you! A charity badge is a small, online widget (a third party item that can be embedded in a web page) that often includes a picture, brief description of a nonprofit organization, and a link to where a viewer can make a donation... Read more