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The Power of PersuasionPutting the science of influence to work in fundraising

Loud and ClearCrafting messages that stick—What nonprofitscan learn from urban legends

In 1981, Garrison Keillor, the popular host of Minnesota Public Radio’s satirical “A Prairie Home Companion,” offered listeners a free poster of his mythical sponsor’s “Powdermilk Biscuits.” To everyone’s surprise, more than 50,000 requests poured in; the station faced a $60,000 printing bill. To avert “financial disaster,” as MPR president William Kling later recalled, the station used the back of the poster to advertise products for sale, such as a Powdermilk Biscuits T-shirt. The idea worked. “I think we netted off that poster, which was really our first catalog, $15,000 or $20,000,” Kling said. “It instantly became clear that there were things like that you could do.”1

Want You to Meet Joe

How a riveting story can get your message across

Serious Business of Storytelling

A United Way affiliate has boosted its fundraising by breaking the rules

productivity could be a powerful way for nonprofit organizationsto multiply the impact of their work, the authors explore how three nonprofits succeeded in reducing costs without sacrificing the quality of their services

The common deal breaker? A sustainable funding model. Nonprofits can likewise use this process to figure out whether and how they can attract growth capital.

In the for-profit world, the term “investment” has clear meaning and investors have sophisticated techniques for spotting and growing the most promising companies. Yet foundations and other nonprofit donors have not developed similar clarity or approaches. As a result, the nonprofit sector’s greatest gems often languish well below their full potential. By better translating for-profit concepts, donors can learn how to scout out and grow the best nonprofits. Likewise, certain nonprofits can take a page from business’s playbook and learn how to attract cash for expansion.

GROWING GRASSROOTS LEADERS

Central to Rare Pride’s early success was its ability to identify and train local leaders who could sell their fellow community members on the value of conservation.

The Reality Underneath the Buzz of Partnerships

For-profit executives use business models—such as “low-cost provider” or “the razor and the razor blade"—as a shorthand way to describe and understand the way companies are built and sustained. Nonprofit executives, to their detriment, are not as explicit about their funding models and have not had an equivalent lexicon—until now. 

How Nonprofits Get Really BigSince 1970, more than 200,000 nonprofits have opened in the U.S., but only 144 of them have reached $50 million in annual revenue. Most of the members of this elite group got big by doing two things. They raised the bulk of their money from a single type of funder such as corporations or government – and not, as conventional wisdom would recommend, by going after diverse sources of funding. Just as importantly, these nonprofits created professional organizations that were tailored to the needs of their primary funding sources