At a recent Women in Development of Greater Boston event, nonprofit fundraisers in education and health shared stories as well as some trends they are seeing in the philanthropic landscape.   Moderated by Michael McNally, Deputy Vice Dean for External Relations at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the panel included: Sarah Christensen, Senior Director of Development...

"That was a good dinner! I am so full, I can barely finish my plate!" How many times have you said this phrase? I know that I've said this countless times. This got me thinking, when we throw away food, where does it go? How much food are we actually throwing away? This led me to our next Did You Know? video, which answers this questions about food waste.

I recently attended a presentation by Suzan Czajkowski, who shared some best practices when using email marketing to promote fundraising events. Simplify Email marketing is about keeping things simple and clear for your readers.  When sending out invitation and registration emails, make sure that the sign-up link is the most obvious content.  It should be above the scroll line. Reduce 66%...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy6gjkICKfk During Super Bowl 50, you may have seen that commercial.  Amongst all the flashy and even goofy commercials, this one made you step back and think.  NO MORE is a public awareness campaign aimed at ending domestic violence and sexual assault.  This advertisement was very effective.  How is this 30-second commercial so compelling? How can you use similar...

Tom Ahern was a recent guest speaker at Women in Development of Greater Boston, sharing tips on writing for digital donor communications. Here are three takeaways I thought were particularly interesting and useful: Using “we” is for public relations. Using “you” is for donor communications. You need to tell the donors that they are needed before they are primed to give. When communicating...

  February is Heart Disease Awareness month. In light of this, we created another "Did You Know?" animation to offer a tip to help prevent this disease. And it begins with a smile.

This is another installment of an interview we had with Abbie von Schlegell from last year. Here, she talks about how major gifts have become a key component of fundraising. Rachel: You've got annual gifts. You've got capital campaigns. Where do major gifts play a role in the spectrum of giving? Abbie: Major gifts in fundraising are usually larger gifts, specifically for a project or even...

Just about everything in life requires a bit of pre-planning and scheduling, so it's no surprise that solid video pre-production for a film shoot is going to lead to better results. Many clients aren't sure how to best prepare for their filming days.  In the words of one, more scientifically-inclined client, it comes down to "filling out the matrix." A matrix is one accurate way to think of it, though...

Through a video project with UMass Boston, I have come to learn a lot more about early childhood education and educators...much more than what I knew when I was researching places to take care of my son when he was 15 months old. What I have come to learn and understand is very disturbing to me, and I am guessing that it could also be shocking to many of you. Did you know that 37% of Massachusetts...

  Some of you may remember that around this time last year, Geoff and I had the bittersweet opportunity to record Heather McManamy on video.  She was a friend of my sister's, 34 years old with Stage 4 cancer.  She wanted us to capture messages and stories that would get shared with her 4-year-old daughter, Bri, as well as images of Heather, her husband, Jeff, and Bri all together. Sadly,...