“If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. How lucky we are that our nation sets aside a day to be great …
So 2016… First we lost Prince, and now we’ve lost our national minds. No matter what is happening in the topsy turvy world, at the Percolator office one constant is music. We worked, played, wallowed (just a little), and danced (a lot) to these inspiring tunes this year. Enjoy! In no particular order, this is our 2016 …
I love the Road Runner cartoons! Somehow, the very fabric of space and time seems to twist and fold to the liking of this Jedi Master bird. But most of us can relate much more to our buddy Wile E. Coyote. The only law that seems to cater to Wile E. (and us) is Murphy’s …
Go check out mountaineers.org on your favorite mobile device. It’s beautiful! The early engagement strategy work we did with The Mountaineers (here’s a link the case study) is now displayed at our fingertips, and kudos to the lovely design and web development from our friends Neal Maher, Ethical UX, and the awesome team at Jazkarta. Our …
This week, Percolator will be trekking to San Francisco to learn, share knowledge, and play at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual event. You’ll find us camping at the Salesforce.org Lodge to hear how you turn followers into champions, checking out tech and strategy sessions, and meeting with nonprofits about our engagement tracking app, StepUp. Want to meet up? …
When Dogwood Initiative needed to mobilize BC residents to reclaim decision making power over the air, land, and water they depend on, they turned to distributed organizing— motivating and empowering champion volunteers to lead and organize others. When they needed all the tools they rely on for distributed organizing to integrate instead of get in …
We love our client, Sacred Heart Community Service, and their work to alleviate poverty in Santa Clara County. Sacred Heart builds community and engages their members to advocate for better policy on housing, education, immigration, etc. They also provide critical services and resources. This week leads up to one of their biggest events of the …
Guest post by Sarah Nason, Operations Director at the Win/Win Network Full disclosure – this is not an unbiased post. I’m an avid fan of monthly giving programs. I always tell people that becoming a monthly donor is great because it, “gives us the sustainable funding we can count on each and every month to …
Guest post by Alia McKee, Sea Change Strategies Christmas carols in July? Please, no. Building snowmen instead of sand castles at the beach? Nah. Wooly sweaters at the swimming hole? Absolutely not. The cold, short days of winter seem far away, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thinking about year-end during the summer months. …
You have your grassroots donors and your members. Those folks are good. You have your monthly donors. Monthly donors are great. (Data tells us that monthly donors continue to give on a monthly basis for an average of 7 years…making that donor = to a major donor for many organizations.) More on them soon. Speaking of major …
Think about borrowing — that is my best online fundraising advice. Here’s what I mean: watch what the major nonprofits or large political campaigns are doing and test a similar version with your audience. Large organizations have the budget and list size to run all sorts of tests from button color to ask amount. Borrowing …
(Update: We wrote a guide to all the advocacy platforms that integrate with Salesforce.) So…elections are on our minds. For those of you who are up to your eyebrows in legislative advocacy, the elections will have a big impact on your chances to improve policy. And more and more nonprofits are getting involved in electoral …
In a previous post, we talked about the qualities we look for in a good Salesforce integration: reliability, transparency, configurability, well-supported, and playing well with NPSP. But evaluating those qualities can be difficult. Even seemingly simple integrations are quite complex under the hood. Often, you won’t find problems until you’ve been using it for a …
Let’s say you have a great email broadcast program and well-cultivated email, now what? How do you get people to continue to open your emails? How do you get people to take action? Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula. From national non-profits to small local ones, from school board races to large political machines, the Percolator …
(…otherwise known as Supporter Retention & Data Stewardship) Managing your email program is a big job. You have to pick the right database and email broadcasting platforms, and you need to be able to wield them well. You need to put together a good editorial calendar that everyone on your team understands and follows. You …
