Monthly Archives: September 2009

Email: The Variable Reinforcement Machine

September 28, 2009 – 10:43 am

Do you check your email 100 times a day, like me? I’ve always wondered, what fuels my compulsion to keep my email open, and check it every 10 minutes or so. For all I complain about email, you’d think I love it based on the attention I give it. This article by Jeff Atwood really [...]

By Ryan | Posted in Best Practices, Links | Comments

It's Donor Tools' Birthday!

September 25, 2009 – 7:08 am

Hard to believe it’s been a whole year since we first opened the doors to Donor Tools! We officially launched Donor Tools donor management software one year ago today at the Greenlights Crossroads Conference for Nonprofit Success in Austin, Texas.
We hit the ground running and haven’t looked back. We’ve welcomed two new staff members (Chris [...]

By Ryan | Posted in Donor Tools News | Tagged , , , | Comments

Non-Profits Abhor Change?

September 22, 2009 – 11:25 am

Tom Watson takes it up against Seth Godin’s idea that “non-profits, in my experience, abhor change” in Why Seth Godin is Wrong.
This comment is particularly wrong-headed: “The only reason not to turn this over to hordes of crowds eager to help you is that it means giving up total control and bureaucracy.”
Some really interesting comments [...]

By Ryan | Posted in Links | Comments

Carrotmob: How Organized Consumer Purchasing Can Change Business

September 14, 2009 – 11:13 am

My dear friend Kristy Graves sent me some information about this concept called Carrotmob. They had a “mob” recently at Epicenter Cafe in SF.
Carrotmob is a method of activism that leverages consumer power to make the most socially-responsible business practices also the most profitable choices. Businesses compete with one another to see who can do [...]

By Chris Dumas | Posted in Best Practices, Links | Tagged , | Comments

The Small Things

September 9, 2009 – 2:44 pm

Our customers are always commenting on how easy Donor Tools is to use – we love that! Especially because we’ve gone to great lengths to keep Donor Tools easy.
But we’re never satisfied – we want Donor Tools to be the easiest and most powerful donor management and fundraising software around. And yes, we think we [...]

By Ryan | Posted in Donor Tools News | Tagged , | Comments

Brief Downtime

September 3, 2009 – 8:17 pm

Thursday evening Donor Tools was briefly offline – I’d like to apologize and give a brief explanation of what happened.
The short downtime was the result of an error that was made while we were configuring our DNS records. DNS records are the way the Internet knows how to find our servers when you type “your-organization.donortools.com” [...]

By Ryan | Posted in Donor Tools News | Comments

The Bar for Success

September 3, 2009 – 7:00 am

Jason Fried, of 37signals, argues that the bar for success in tech businesses is too low:
If there was an airline that flew more passengers than anyone else, but lost money on each one, would we call it a success? If there was a restaurant that served more people than anyone else, but lost money on [...]

By Ryan | Posted in Best Practices, Links | Tagged , | Comments

Online Fundraising Idea From Charity Navigator

September 2, 2009 – 5:13 pm

I was very impressed when I ran across a very well done pop up ask on the Charity Navigator website.
It reads:
Did you know?
If everyone who paid us a visit over the course of a year voluntarily gave $1, we could comfortably meet our annual budget!
Our web site and all of its great content are absolutely [...]

By Chris Dumas | Posted in Best Practices, Fundraising, Links | Tagged , , | Comments

Link: How to Use Facebook for Nonprofit Organizations

September 1, 2009 – 12:05 pm

This training video focuses on ways in which nonprofit organizations can use the power of Facebook to create a solid social media presence and to increase the audiences for their missions and ongoing efforts.
Available for $39.99 from CharityHowTo.com

By Ryan | Posted in Best Practices, Links, Resources | Comments