Kintera Connect Partner Program Welcomes New Merchant Partner, EZ Prints

EZ Prints joins a growing list of Kintera Connect Partners to bring applications and solutions to nonprofit organizations.

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kintera Inc. (NASDAQ: KNTA) today announced that EZ Prints, a leading private-label digital photofinishing, fulfillment and technology solutions firm, has joined the Kintera Connect Partner Program as a merchant partner.

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A journey into social networking

This report explores the social networking phenomenon.

This 68-page marketing report (PDF) on social networking, commissioned by Fox Interactive Media, is titled, "Never Ending Friending: A journey into social networking." Main sections include: The Insider's View of the Evolving World of Social Networking; The Momentum Effect: Creating Brand Value in the Social Networking Space; and Implications for Brands and Agencies.

Read more on Soul Soup 2.0

Baseball Hall of Fame Scores with Segmentation

Read how the Baseball Hall of Fame turned its members into donors using custom-built segmentation models.

By Chantal Tode

A certain level of passion for a cause is required in order to plunk down $1,000 or more towards it; the kind of passion that one would think baseball fans might have for their beloved sport. However, until recently, turning $40-a-year members into bigger donors had proved a challenge for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Five years ago, the National Baseball Hall of Fame was doing very little direct mail, says Ken Meifert, director of membership and sales for the organization. Then the decision was made to build up the National Baseball Hall of Fame's membership program primarily via direct mail.

"Our membership program has been growing by leaps and bounds," Meifert says, adding that the organization is sending out approximately 20,000 acquisition pieces per month and adding between 8,000 and 10,000 new members a year. The National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY, currently has approximately 25,000 active members. Two years ago, the total was closer to 10,000.

However, while efforts to sign up new members were proving successful, the organization was having a harder time figuring out how to turn some members into "donors and bigger supporters of the museum," Meifert says. The challenge it faced was "figuring out who in our database of names was most likely to donate gifts of $1,000 or more," he continues.

This article was published on 8/24/2007. Read more on the DM News website.

Prospect Research: What You Don't Know - and How it Can Hurt You

You must research prospective major donors before you meet with them or else you may be leaving money on the table.

By Margaret King

A few years ago, one of my clients requested rush research on a prospective donor. The client, a development officer at an independent school, explained that the headmaster was planning to meet with a parent to ask for a gift. He believed that the prospective donor had the capacity to make a $300,000 gift, but the development officer thought the number might be higher.

The completed research supported my client’s feeling; the school revised its strategy and asked for a $1 million gift. The meeting was a great success — the donor agreed to make a gift totaling $1.3 million over a three-year period!

Without understanding the donor’s capacity to give, my client would have received a much smaller gift, and the donor might not have felt as connected to the school.

Prospect research should be considered the invisible yet indispensable arm of a major-gifts program. It helps you understand a prospective donor’s giving capacity, among other things.

Unfortunately, many nonprofit development offices are not using research to understand the giving capacity of their prospective donors because they believe they can’t afford to set up a research department. As my client’s story illustrates, you can’t afford not to have some level of research.

What is it?
Prospect research typically is a multifaceted process of retrieval, analysis and dissemination of biographical and financial information. This information can be at the core of identifying, cultivating and soliciting major-gift prospects. It often uncovers:
• shared values,
• prospective donors’ friends and
• associates who can help form a basis for institutional involvement.

To develop donor profiles, researchers consult biographical and general reference books, scan journals and newspapers, and search computerized databases, and unpublished public records to cull the necessary information. As I’m sure you can imagine, the Internet plays a big role in research.

Read more of this article, published on 8/1/2007, from Fundraising Success.