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,...

You can watch this video for one of two reasons: 1) to hear Rachel muse about how organizations differentiate themselves; or 2) answer the question Why the heck is she dressed up like Julia Child? Rachel: We’ve entered the holiday zone and I’m just whipping up some of my famous Indian pudding for the office party. This is also the time to reflect on the past year. We here at Reflection...

The first Smiles Video was in 2011. Then last year. And now 2015. It hasn't been that many years, and it hasn't been consistent, but it feels like the start of a tradition. Anyway, each time we've had a lot of fun reviewing the folks we've worked with in the previous 12 months. We hope you can share in a little of their happiness.