We came, we saw, and we met a lot of great people! One thing that stands out in the nonprofit market is how amazing all of the people and organizations are. Take, for example, the Ragdale Foundation, and Leslie Brown, its Director of Communications and Programs, who stopped by the booth to chat about Little Green Light and donor management systems, and ended up winning our Flip HD camera giveaway. Here’s a picture of Chris and Leslie at the conference:

We couldn’t be happier that Leslie won. She can put the camera to good use capturing how wonderful the Ragdale Foundation really is (by all accounts, it is an awesome place–it’s an artist’s retreat just outside Chicago).

We also have a less exciting picture of us standing in front of our booth (that’s me, Nick, on the left and brother Chris on the right):

Donor management was a big point of interest this year; one guy said to us, “Man, donor management is where it’s at this year!” He was a cool guy too, so it must be true. We were happy to reap the benefits of being one of the simplest, and the most affordable, donor management systems on the market and at the conference.

A big thank you to the folks at NTEN for putting on such a great event, and to all the attendees who stopped by to talk to us and helped make the conference such a huge success for us.

In a recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy titled “New Rules of Attraction,” author Holly Hall talked about how the “traditional” methods of fundraising are faltering and charities are increasingly looking for ways to appeal to online donors. These methods include direct mail and telemarketing–both of which appear to be losing ground. A lot of money is being spent on “hiring extra staff members to devise and test new ideas, and are upgrading software to analyze the results.”

None of this appears to be saving money, and instead appears to be costing just as much as direct mail. Indeed, the Nature Conservancy is launching an online campaign to raise $1 million but “conservancy officials have no idea if the electronic drive will meet its goal.”

Interestingly, the article does suggest some “new approaches” things that are working well to attract new donors, including, surprisingly enough, “Making Pitches in Person.” The article then describes the efforts of World Vision, the international relief group, which asks its most loyal donors to volunteer to seek donations from other people. Apparently the organization began to recruit its donors to give presentations about giving to their colleagues at work and church. They now have 255 “Child Ambassadors” (those who give 8 presentations a year) who have recruited more than 4,000 new monthly donors. An example is:

“Vicki Casper, a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines, is World Vision’s most successful recruiter. She has single-handedly persuaded 400 people in the past two years to become monthly donors, including a passenger on a recent flight to Indianapolis. He offered to sponsor a dozen children for at least a yand, as he got off the plane, handed Ms. Casper checks for each child totaling more than $5,000.”

Hmmmm, if you are beginning to think this “new” method sounds kind of old-school, you are not alone. A consultant in the article says just that: old-school techniques such as “member-get-a-member” are gaining traction in an online world. We at Little Green Light would agree.

Little Green Light does something no other database is designed to do: it gives ambassadors, volunteers, members reaching out to their friends and acquaintances access to a database shared by a team of people—they can communicate with their team to build momentum. If Vicki Casper were using LGL, her volunteer coordinator and her whole team would have known about that $5,000 group of checks as soon as she could log in to the internet. We believe that is powerful, momentum building stuff.

LGL focuses on open, fast communication among people who want to raise money for the organization they love. Contact us now at info@littlegreenlight.com if you want a speedy, user-friendly tool to help you stay on task and communicate with your team about fund raising.

Best,

Chris Bicknell