There are numerous blogs run by enthusiasts on almost every topic you can name. Some of these, undoubtedly, touch on the mission of almost any organization, including yours. Others have a tangential or occasional relationship to your mission. You owe it to yourself to become familiar not only with the blogs that relate to your work, but also to the communities around these blogs.

You can discover a lot about what sort of social network might arise around your organization online by examining the blogs that cover similar material. You can also offer the bloggers access to your organization’s unique resources and insights – many will be enthusiastic about the opportunity to interview your staff by phone or through IM or email.

If you are using the 3G platform, you can also offer bloggers a way to put their influence in the community they have built to work creating change in the world. Like anyone else, a blogger can start a unique webpage to raise money for selected programs of your organization. Don’t underestimate the power of blogs to drive attention towards your organization and to raise money for selected causes.

And don’t be shy about reaching out to blogs that relate only tangentially to a particular program. For example, if you are raising money to buy soccer equipment for children in urban schools, don’t just hit up the “do-gooder” blogs related to education. Reach out to the soccer blogs as well.

Blogs provide you with a wonderful way to find new communities of individuals already aligned with your cause. Make allies with your bloggers and you’ll find it rewarding in many ways.

You’re having an event.  You’ve got people who support your cause enough to take time out of their busy lives and show up.  These are some of your best allies — make sure you know who they are!

The main goal of a sign-in sheet is to get names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, for everyone at the event.  You can solicit these supporters again and engage them in your organization.  Here are some best practices that GGG recommends for every event:

• Have a standard sign-in sheet that you can copy and use. It looks more professional than a blank piece of paper.  If you don’t have one, feel free to take ours (Word | PDF); you’re welcome to edit it.  If you develop your own, here are a few tips we implemented on ours:
  • The top right of our sign-in sheet has a short inspirational message about why this is important.  This supports the goal of collecting data by helping people connect their signing in directly to helping the cause they’re supporting.  Otherwise, people may be disinclined to sign in, or may leave out information.
  • The ordering and spacing of columns is intentional.  We put e-mail address and phone number first, right after the name.  We’d like for everyone to fill in all the information, but if they’re going to leave something out, we’d like to capture the e-mail address.  We also made sure to leave plenty of physical space for people to write in e-mail addresses.

• A check-in table is a good way to get people’s information as they enter the event.  If you do a check-in table, it needs to be staffed (try using volunteers).  Plan the layout to manage traffic, and make sure people don’t take too long at the table, or attendees will start skipping sign-in.  You could have many sign-in sheets at one long table, with only one person staffing it.  Having people write name tags can be a nice touch, but also could be more time-consuming than it’s worth.

• Have volunteers or staff roam around the room with clipboards asking attendees to sign in.  (Buy clipboards! Having worked here and there in politics, I don’t know how anyone would ever get elected without clipboards.)

• “Prime” each physical sheet of paper by filling in one person’s information (yours, maybe, or a fictitious name) on the first line of every sheet.  This will encourage attendees to sign in below with their full information.  You’ll notice that if one person leaves out the e-mail or phone number at the top of a sheet, others will often follow suit.  Priming reverses this effect with an example line including full information.  It can’t hurt, and people will get the message that it’s an example line.  You can prime one sheet and then use photocopies of it for sign-in.  Be careful not to enter these priming lines into your database after the event - this is why I use a standard name, like Avery Allen or Judy Weiss.

With a good sign-in sheet and good management, you’ll leave the event with a gift that keeps on giving: an expanded database of supporters.  So don’t forget the sign-in sheets.  Your next big fundraiser or major volunteer leader might have just walked in the door!

Writing appeals for delivery by e-mail or through other online vehicles is significantly different than writing traditional direct mail appeals. If an organization’s efforts to utilize social networking and online communications to raise funds are to be successful, then those efforts must take into account the demands of the medium and the unique opportunities presented.

E-mail and other online communication has a much greater sense of urgency and immediacy than direct mail. This can be advantageous when attempting to link a fund-raising effort to a current event. A non-profit can actually use a combination of web-based information, e-mail communication, and social networking tools to become a part of the news cycle from the point of view of their constituents. It gives every organization the ability to reach out to their constituency and make them feel a part of the events unfolding in their community or in the world as they happen. This can be a powerful fund-technique and when skillfully deployed can, correctly, give the impression of an organization responding deftly to unfolding circumstances.

The downside is that it is extraordinarily rare for any online communication to be set aside for future consideration. Response to online communications tends to be either immediate or non-existent. Direct mail, in contrast, “hangs around” and can be consumed and processed on the donor’s time schedule. Organizations that code their response slips so as to tie the reply to the appeal know that donors respond to appeals in a sort of bell-curve pattern with some seemingly writing checks as the letter carrier delivers the appeal and others apparently having filed the appeal for later consideration – sometimes delaying response by a year or more. Online communication, however, tends to either grab attention or vanish into the aether never to be considered again.

So, how do you grab attention? First and foremost is to make sure that your communications are timely. Find the hook in the world that makes your organization’s mission particularly relevant and important at this time. Secondly, don’t ask for funds just to ask for funds. People see giving money as a rather uninteresting form of engagement. Instead, make it clear that by giving money, donors are taking action that will translate into a real difference in the world. Consider the difference between these two paragraphs:

Your gift today will be used to purchase bicycles for children in rural Africa so that they can more easily and more safely attend their schools, which are often located at great distances from home. Please give generously so that we can help these children get the education to which they are entitled.

Every day, children in Africa walk great distances to get to school, often risking dangerous conditions after dark to get the education they know will help improve their lives. Something as simple as a bicycle can reduce travel times, help ensure they can continue their education and make their travel safer. Take action today by donating to our Bikes for School Fund. Let these children know that when they set off before dawn to go to school, they aren’t going it alone.

It’s true that the same technique can be used in traditional, direct mail fund raising. However, online communication seems particularly suited to viewing the “gift as action,” especially when the cause is timely.