Successful Online Fundraising

Here's a non-technical article about successful online fundraising.

http://nonprofit.about.com/od/onlinefundraising/a/givingpages.htm?nl=1

The article describes two successful online fundraising campaigns using Firstgiving, the web service we are using for the NAMI Clermont County fundraising walk.

From the article:

It is person-to-person fundraising - our supporters are making personalized appeals to their social network, and each one of those individuals is leveraging their social network. It's an amazing tool that can really increase donations.

The principles discussed in this article also apply to NAMIWALKS team pages. Every NAMIWalks page has a “share” button at the top that makes it possible to link to Facebook, MySpace or other social networking websites.

Of course you can't neglect the next part of the grassroots fundraising job:

Making the "ask.”

--pk---

Activist's Book Club - Understanding Poverty

About a year ago I attended a large Cincinnati workshop for nonprofits. I thought the speaker with the best lesson for smaller nonprofits was Ruby K. Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty.

Though criticised in some quarters for offering stereotypes in place of analysis, I have been struck over the course of the past year by the truth of what she writes, especially with regard to the primacy of relationships among people who live in poverty.

One example. This past weekend I read Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. Mr. Venkatesh writes about his graduate-school field work in Chicago's most notoriously crime-ridden public housing projects. He worked closely with gang leaders, tenant association leaders, and youth program coaches in an effort to describe how people living in US inner-city poverty make it through each day.

Time and again, throughout the book, Venkatesh's experiences validate Ms. Payne's concepts.

I can recommend the lessons in these books to help educators and activists design better programs, and increase their effectiveness.

--pk---

Ohio Mental Health Care Rides on the Stimulus Package

Ohio Mental Health Care Rides on the Stimulus Package


I received this email today. Please support this issue if you can.

--pk---

Dear Mental Health Advocate:
The future of mental health services in Ohio is resting in the hands of the United States Congress. If Congress does not include funding for states in the Federal Stimulus Package currently under consideration, we are told by Governor Strickland that 51,530 fewer Ohioans will receive mental health services, including individuals with bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia and other major disorders.
We need your help. Please contact your representative and Senators Voinovich and Brown in Washington and urge them to support state assistance in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Let them know that without these funds, there are people with severe mental illness in Ohio who will die.
Call the numbers below and ask to be connected to your Congressman and Senators. If you are unsure who your representative is, click here: http://www.oacbha.org/advocacy/congress.html.

U.S. House of Representatives
202-224-3121

U.S. Senate
202-224-3121

Thank you. Your help is critical.

Your friends at the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio (NAMI Ohio)