You asked and we listened! By popular demand we’re turning the tables on our roundtable format and energizing them with new topics to rev up the convo and get your ideas flowing. Grab some breakfast and come prepared to discuss, debate and learn. There’s nothing square about our “un-roundtables” this year. Check out the list of “un-roundtables” below:
MY ROCKSTAR CAMPAIGN
Have you ever created a fundraising campaign that exceeded your wildest expectations? That whacked the ball out of the park, and then some? Do tell. Check your modesty at the door and bring ONE of your rockstar campaigns to share with your colleagues – and get great ideas back in return.
50 SHADES OF PMS 429
Where can you find this un-roundtable? At the intersection of good design and good direct response strategy of course. Drop by for a lively discussion on how graphics and design choices can make – or break – your direct marketing results.
WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT?
Looking for a new format, technique or creative approach to try in your direct marketing program? Want to hear what your colleagues are doing? Here’s the deal: bring one new technique, format or idea of your own to share and hear new ideas from your colleagues in exchange.
FUN WITH FUNDRAISING SUCCESS
Meet the editors of FundRaising Success to talk about the fundraising landscape and the topics you would like to see covered in upcoming issues.
I AM NOT SORRY TO CALL YOU DURING DINNER
Let’s just say it. Everybody hates telemarketing and every year somebody declares that its dead. But let’s also admit that for most organizations it produces the greatest percentage of upgrade and acquisition revenue. So let’s get it all out on the table. What frustrates you about telemarketing? What have you never understood about it? What would you like to see different with your calling? Do you want to take it in-house? Do you want to switch things up? Share the table with a telemarketing expert who has been client, a consultant and a vendor.
WHO IS REALLY A DONOR?
Do you ever wonder what really defines a donor in an organization vs. a prospect? Is someone who has given your organization a gift really a donor or someone who just made a contribution? What really predicts someone’s likelihood to be a donor or just a habitual giver. Or are organizations just in a constant process of re-acquiring a donor to the organization.
Join our healthy debate on this constantly changing dynamic.
HELLO MY NAME IS _______________
Not sure what you want to talk about? Just want to meet fellow direct marketers and shoot the breeze? Stop by this un-roundtable to chat, chew and make a new friend or two.
HELP! MY BOARD TOTALLY DOESN’T GET DIRECT RESPONSE FUNDRAISING
Got a low-information Board member or boss who doesn’t know a BRE from a CTR? Who says things like “Our acquisition program loses money, so we should cancel it.” Take a deep breath. This is the un-roundtable for you. Come swap experiences, brainstorm solutions and hear how others have educated their bosses to build stronger support and better results for their programs.
THE WHYs and HOWs on RFPs
Discuss how to best manage and benefit from the RFP agency selection process. Discuss best practices and learn what to avoid to maximize value for both clients and agencies.
Katya Andresen, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer
Katya Andresen is Chief Strategy Officer of Network for Good, as well as a speaker, author and blogger about nonprofit marketing, online outreach, social media and fundraising. In addition, she is an adjunct professor of communications at American University’s Key Certificate Program and serves on the board of NTEN. Katya has trained thousands of causes in effective engagement, and her marketing materials for non-profits have won national and international awards. She is the author of the book, Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes and was featured in the e-book, Nine Minds of Marketing. She is also an author featured in People to People Fundraising – Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Charities. Fundraising Success Magazine named her Fundraising Professional of the Year in 2007, and she has since become one of its regular columnists. Before joining Network for Good, she was Senior Vice President of Sutton Group, a marketing and communications firm and a marketing consultant overseas in Ukraine. She also worked for CARE International. Katya traces her passion for good causes to the enormous social need she witnessed as a journalist prior to her work in the non-profit sector. She was a foreign correspondent for Reuters News and Television in Asia and for Associated Press and major US newspapers in Africa.
Do you ever wish you had more time to brainstorm to come up with the next great thing? Do you ever wish you had the courage or budget to try something fresh, or new, or bold? In this session you will hear 5 Fresh and Innovative Ideas. These fundraisers took risks—let’s see what happened!
Intended Audience: All
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U.S. individual giving to charities actually fell in the last decade – for the first time ever. New donor acquisition has plummeted by 15% over the last five years. Recent donor experience research suggests nonprofits are failing to meet donors’ expectations, especially those of younger donors. At the same time, we have huge new opportunities with the explosion of new media channels and an unprecedented number of people entering prime giving years with maturation of the Baby Boomers. Unfortunately, most nonprofits have not yet fully captured these trends as digital has been much slower to catch on for nonprofits than for many commercial sectors. What are the real underlying drivers of these trends? What do future donors want? What does this mean for nonprofit fundraising? What will be required to succeed and which nonprofits are best positioned (and worst positioned) to be winners in the coming decade? If you care about where your nonprofit fundraising needs to head, this is a ‘can’t miss’ interactive discussion session. We will dig into underlying trends and data and do a little crystal balling as to what the future holds – and discuss what it means for all of us.
Intended Audience: Fundraisers and executives who are ready to adjust their strategies to meet the needs of donors in the future.
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This session will outline proven strategies to optimize long term value (LTV) of your direct response donors. Special focus will be given to selecting the best media channels (direct mail, telephone, digital, video and event marketing, etc.) to enhance relationship with donors. Additional focus will offer solutions regarding messaging, offer development and the role of giving clubs in optimization of donor value. Case histories from successful nonprofits will bring these proven approaches to life.
Intended Audience: Anyone with responsibility for relationships with, or revenue from donors.
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If you have ever left a conference session on integrated fundraising wondering how in the world you’ll ever have the resources to do THAT!, then this session is for you. We’ll talk with fundraisers from small and regional nonprofits about scaling multi-channel methodologies and best practices down to workable bits and hear some tips and trends you can use today.
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Does your Housefile have a clean bill of health or is it bound for the emergency room? How can you tell?
This session will walk you through several key indicators that all nonprofits should monitor and set you on the path to defining, and keeping a pulse on, indicators that are unique to your organization.
We’ll also discuss potential ways to keep a “sick” Housefile from needing life support.
Intended Audience: Anyone interested in developing and tracking key Housefile indicators.
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Learn new ways to utilize online marketing tools (site retargeting) to increase number and size of gifts from new and/or existing donors.
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Stories are an essential tool for communicating with donors — a way to educate, engage and build a stronger emotional bond to your cause and brand. The right stories bridge what you do and who you help by giving your mission context, meaning, a face and a name. But how do you create that perfect story? The one that moves people to share with their friends on Facebook and Twitter? And inspires them to give?
In this session, we will cover a range of topics surrounding the art of storytelling and why stories are effective. In a world where content is king, we will discuss what makes a good story, how to shape your organization’s stories for different target audiences and channels, and where storytelling is headed in the future.
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What if your staff and board leadership decided to significantly increase your organization’s investment in acquisition – to not just dramatically increase the size of your member and supporter base, but to diversify it as well? How would you invest the extra money … and then convince them to continue investing in a multi-year plan for sustained growth? In this interactive panel session, find out how three organizations approached this exciting challenge, and maybe even be inspired to create own your plan for expanding the capacity of your program or organization. The panel will also touch on what nonprofits can do to increase transparency around the cost of fundraising. At a time when the media and watchdogs are focused on the high costs of fundraising, particularly acquisition, we all need to get much, much better at explaining the increasingly expensive but essential acquisition process.
Intended Audience: Intermediate – Advanced
Learning Outcomes:
1. Understand how multi-year growth plans are developed and tracked.
2. Learn how to maximize a wide variety of acquisition channels, by understanding short-term and long-term metrics.
3. Be inspired and/or gain confidence in creating and presenting a multi-year growth proposal to senior staff/and or boards.
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The Max Hart L. Nonprofit Achievement Award Presentation
Join the most powerful and powerful and influential professionals for the Max L. Hart Nonprofit Achievement Award. Presented annually, this award recognizes career accomplishments by an exceptional fundraising professional with a track record of service, leadership, innovation, and integrity.
Why are non-profits transitioning from offline advertising to online for non-profits? Why is the transition helping to maximize performance of both offline and online marketing efforts? How is online advertising helping to integrate all marketing channels? What’s new in online advertising and how can non-profits take advantage? Come join us for the answers to these questions and much, much more as we discuss online advertising, it’s past, present and future.
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Everything you need to know to create a winning multi-channel direct response strategy.
Need to develop your annual plan for your direct response program but don’t even know where to begin? Join us to learn the basic building blocks of developing your annual direct response plan. Learn how to build a strong program that integrates multiple channels and drives growth from donors at all levels.
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We’ve all been pulled over by them – the client branding officers with a badge and a billy club that can beat your idea or strategy into submission. Do they go too far? Do they lack an understanding of what makes direct marketing and fundraising so much different from other forms of institutional visibility? Or are they unsung heroes, thanklessly standing up to creative egos that would always prefer to run wild? We’ll see examples of on- and off-brand campaigns, both winners and losers, and hear from a non-profit brand officer, their direct marketing colleague down the hall, and an agency creative director discuss the ins and outs of brand bibles, graphic standards, and the merits of allowing direct marketing to make its own rules.
Intended Audience: Non-profit staff, agency creatives, and freelancers.
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Lots has been written and preached about the need to create, maintain and grow donor relationships. What has been missing is an empirical, proven framework to measure the strength of the donor relationship AND identification of the marketing, fundraising and donor experience actions your organization can take to influence donor attitudes.
Why should we care? Because donor attitudes dictate donor behavior AND impacting donor attitudes is the key to retention. Donor attitudes are what you DIRECTLY impact with your actions.
In the current day climate of flat (or declining) retention rates and increasing cost to acquire new donors new insights are a requirement for organizations to plug the increasing number of holes in their “”leaky bucket”" in order to re-establish a path of sustainable long-term revenue growth.
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Welcome series are vitally important in the success or failure of nonprofit fundraising. In this session, Care2 and clients will open their vaults and share their findings on welcome series messages that start off your new online relationship with a bang. Subject lines that sizzle. Lengths & links. Images that impact. Words that educate, and engage.
Intended Audience: Beginner-Intermediate
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Wouldn’t you like to double or triple the annual value of a donor … and increase retention at the same time? More and more, organizations are turning to monthly giving to do just that. But monthly giving programs can be complicated to execute properly … and, at times, can even seem overwhelming.
In this session, we’ll use case studies from two different organizations to illustrate how to create a successful monthly giving program. We will explore how to
- Use a variety of channels to solicit and retain monthly donors
- Identify your best prospects for monthly giving
- Create compelling and effective messaging about monthly
- Manage the fulfillment of monthly donations, and measure program performance
This session is designed both for organizations seeking to strengthen the performance of their monthly giving programs and for those that are considering launching a monthly giving program for the first time.
Intended Audience: Intermediate. For nonprofits seeking to strengthen or introduce a monthly giving program.
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Hear from nonprofit leaders regarding the impact of the November election on the issues you care about most to accomplish your fundraising goals! Will the USPS survive & what will happen to nonprofit mailing rates? Will charitable tax issues favor giving incentives or reduce them for your donors? What is happening at the state level that could restrict fundraising? What new restrictions threaten the donor data you hold? Hear about these issues and more so that you have an impact on the direction of these issues for the nonprofit fundraising community. Learn about a new project of the DMA to protect the data essential to fundraising…and much more…
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Tired of attending conferences with all the big non-profits and wishing you had their enormous budgets? Then don’t miss this fun and interactive session where seasoned industry experts will share their best budget-busting ideas to boost your bottom line.We’ll look at every inch of your program and give you practical tips you can use right away to stretch your budget dollars and improve ROI! So whether you’re a one-person development office or part of a larger team this is one session you won’t want to miss!
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BACK by POPULAR DEMAND!
Wine & Cheese Reception on Nonprofit Federation’s Government Affairs Advocacy
Join us for a special Wine & Cheese Networking Reception where you’ll learn about the latest on the issues impacting nonprofit fundraising. Members of the DMANF Government Affairs Committee & staff will discuss legislative & regulatory updates on postal, charitable deductibility, and more!
Learn what you need to do to protect the nonprofit community from regulatory threats and enjoy the company of your peers. Make sure to RSVP for this conference attendee only event! Space is limited to the first 150 people. RSVP today.
Join us at for THE Power Networking Reception of the year at Join us at for THE Power Networking Reception of the year at The Carnegie Library at Mt. Vernon Square.
Mix and mingle with colleagues, top fundraisers, and marketers on February 7 at one of Washington, DC’s historic landmarks for one of the most popular networking events in the nonprofit community. This is a ticketed event for conference attendees only and space is limited to the first 250 people.
This is a ticketed event, to purchase a ticket to this not-to-miss event register today.
A ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution may work for some things, but not in the case of donor messaging. By creating more customized donor tracks that incorporate individuals’ preference data, highly personalized correspondences can then be tailored to increase response rates and drive loyalty. Join us as we discuss how distinctive messaging has made overall program improvements as well as creative ideas for cost-effective execution.
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Join past winners of the Nonprofit Federation’s Max L. Hart Award for Fundraising Achievement for a lively conversation about where direct response has been and where it’s heading. These experts will share their successes and challenges, answer your questions, and take a stab at predicting the future of DR fundraising.
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Direct Response Television and Face-to-Face/Canvassing are two innovative strategies for acquiring donors and monthly sustainers. Your board members and executives may be intrigued by these high profile approaches, but do they work? Get the facts about the upfront costs, set-up requirements, success metrics, geographic market performance, long term donor value and more. These are high risk strategies with potentially high rewards. Find out if these approaches are right for your organization, your mission and your “offer.” Session will include several case studies showing both the pros and cons of these channels.
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Over the last five years donor acquisition has become costly, flat and results in a high attrition for most organizations but it is the lifeblood of your direct response program. Myth: all premium acquisition is costly and usually results in low retention rates….not true! Learn from several leaders in the non profit acquisition arena who will share the following techniques: how to acquire long term donors, how to determine which premiums will help you to increase donor retention and how to pick the best mission acquisition lists for your organization and much more. Learn several innovative acquisition techniques that are enabling these groups to acquire new donors at a higher retention rate.
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We all work hard to grow the patron base. But is that hard work truly paying off if patrons don’t return and renew? When studies in the symphony world show that 90% of first time ticket buyers never come back, something needs to be done. We need to find new ways to achieve and sustain success.
The performing and visual arts worlds have been trying to address this issue by slowing down churn and building stronger relationships with their patrons. Join Development professionals from the performing and visual arts worlds that are addressing donor churn on a daily basis.
The panel will discuss what is churn, how churn impacts an organization, and current research regarding churn. The panel will also share strategies and tactics they have employed to slow churn, increase retention and to make every season a time to gain!
Intended Audience: All levels of Development and Marketing professionals.
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How do donors with a presence in social media look and perform when compared to members who are not social media active? Do they give more or less often? Can you turn a member/donor who is very socially active into a Brand Ambassador? Do they even care at all?!
The Arbor Day Foundation will share the results from a case study of 100,000 housefile names matched to their Social Media habits to answer some of the above questions and foster spirited discussion.
Intended Audience: Anyone interested in how social mediates look on their Housefile.
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You’ve spent months developing, budgeting and refining your fundraising strategies, and then it happens… a news story about your organization throws all your careful planning into disarray. Your phone is ringing non-stop with donor inquiries, your upcoming direct mail appeal is no longer relevant, and indecision on how to respond has left you and your colleagues paralyzed. Think it can’t happen to you? Think again.
In today’s world of instant news, conspicuous charity watchdog groups, and rising donor expectations, non-profit organizations must be prepared to mitigate potentially harmful press coverage and to capitalize on public relations opportunities. In this session, you’ll hear how non-profits have navigated the murky waters of a media frenzy, the lessons they learned along the way, and how you can better position your organization to transform impending crisis into opportunity.
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The future of fundraising is now, everyone knows that an intergrated, multi-channel direct marketing and digital fundraising program that incorporates all channels: DM, TM, Online, Web and social media and maximizing CRM is king but what next? What is the future of fundraising success? What programs should you invest in now that will reap big returns in the next 3-5 years? Will donors fatigue…will economic climates sustain or bomb? Will baby boomers be the next boost or is Generation X worth your time? Don’t miss this great opportunity to learn everything but the kitchen sink in less than 45 minutes to help steer you into a postive net worth path from leaders and experts in the fundraising and marketing world.
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Don’t miss the final forward also known as the conference wrap up, where panel of fundraising experts share the 25 most brilliant ideas captured during the conference!
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