We were surprised by our two cases of COVID 19 at Engage USA. We were early adapters. I spent hours learning best practices for keeping the virus outside of our walls. Before Covid was spreading in the US, I networked with business owners in China and Italy through the Entrepreneurs Organization. What they told us was alarming but I knew what to expect…

Over on the Future Fundraising Now blog, Jeff Brooks takes a look at the differences between what motivates people over 50 years old and what motivates those younger than 50…

Every organization has a different donor profile.  We’ve been amazed at how different the donors to organizations with similar messages sometimes are. 

Marcy Stengel over at Bloomerang has some great advice for fundraisers:

“Talk less, ask more”  

Focusing on the donor is almost always emphasized in fundraising books and guides – but ways to focus on the donor often go unexplained…

At the beginning of the year, the Postal Service released Mail Moments – a compilation of mail recipient statistics and insights. 

USPS hired a research firm to survey customers and gather information “to understand mail behavior, overall mail habits, and bill payment activities.”

There’s a lot of great info to consider. I found some of it surprising…

Last winter, Burger King launched an advertising campaign its own Chief Marketing Officer called “the opposite of direct marketing.”

Burger King offered customers a Whopper for just one cent. But there was a catch…

I’m always on the lookout for interesting books about fundraising. So, I thought I’d share one of my favorites with you.  

Whether you’re a fundraising newcomer or grizzled veteran, The Fundraiser’s Guide to Irresistible Communication by Jeff Brooks is a…

I just came across this video from Bloomerang TV. Steven Shattuck, Bloomerang TV’s host, and John Lepp from Agents of Good bring up some great points about an important aspect of fundraising.

I’ve never met John Lepp. He’s not a client. I guess he’s a colleague. But before this afternoon, I’d never heard of him. And I love everything John Lepp has to say.

Direct mail is most powerful when we make donors feel like heroes. It allows us to empower people and…

Have you ever seen one of those triangular diagrams asking you to “only pick two” of three seemingly essential options?

Sometimes they’re used to represent a college student’s painstaking decision of how to spend their very limited free time on activities like studying, sleep, or socializing. 

Bill Jacobs posted a diagram on the Analytical Ones website that applies to business and fundraising (or almost anything). 

Andrew Fegley takes a really interesting look at the rapid evolution direct mail is undergoing in his article, How Chief Marketing Officers Can Innovate With Direct Mail, on Entrepreneur.com.

Data and technology are being used in new and exciting ways we hadn’t dreamed possible just ten or fifteen years ago. I wrote a little bit about one example of this in my last blog.

As Andrew notes, we’re constantly improving how we use data to appeal to the right people.

I stumbled across a fascinating article by Henry DeVries over at Forbes, How A Direct Mail Secret Could 10X Your Response Rate.

As part of their direct mail campaign, instead of sending letters to prospective customers, a company sent mini-tablets!

Jeff Brooks, the man who literally wrote the book on fundraising, put together a great list of important principles he’s discovered over his 30-year career. 

Check out this speech my business partner, and President of Engage USA, Kathleen Clem, gave about the journey of starting our company.

It’s taken a lot of hard work but we’re so proud of the services we provide our clients.

Kathleen, and our entire team, will never leave you holding the bag.

I haven’t reached the point that I only log into Facebook to see photos of my grandchildren--yet.  But I have to admit that I’m not quite sure what Instagram or Snap Chat are all about.  

So when I spent time this weekend with my friend Mark Murphy who embraces Social Media to promote his books, seminars, and studies at LeadershipIQ, I was surprised by how interesting Social Media can be.