For Online Advertising Fast and instant are different - While it’s true that the world of online advertising is fast-paced- banking on instantaneous programs is a good way to fall short of your goals. This is because online advertising is not a synonym for instant. Planning for a digital program will give you time to really define your goals and make sure your campaign has the right components, creative, and timeline to achieve them.
Jason Mida Answers Your Non-Profit Fundraising Questions
Jason Mida is a seasoned fundraising and political professional, having served in a number of roles throughout his career. His work has been focused in the areas that truly motivate him, including LGBT causes. Jason Mida is the former Vice President of Development for the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, the Vice President of Development for the American Association of Peoples with Disabilities, and the President of Mida Associates.
Member public affairs strategies can be an amazing way to move your issue forward. Membership organizations should have a head start when it comes to public affairs strategies, but that head start is often complicated. Membership organizations tend to have bureaucratic structures that make it difficult to work nimbly, especially when it comes to public affairs. Because of this, some member organizations have avoided using member-based public affairs strategies and they are missing out.
Here are some ways to use your membership to enhance public affairs strategies by turning them into member public affairs strategies.
How Democrats Can Jumpstart Their Campaigns for the Future
Races are heating up, but there are a number of exciting opportunities for Democrats up and down the ticket. Here are some tips to jumpstart your Democratic campaign:
1. Do a thorough self-assessment. Are you ready to run? Does your family support you? Does your community support you? Have you done your politics? These are important questions to ask and know the answer to before you even file to run. If you can confidently answer, “yes” to these questions, you are ready to jumpstart your campaign.
2. Plan, plan, plan! The biggest mistake a candidate can make is failing to create a campaign plan. Your campaign plan should include a vote goal, budget, timeline, and message. Campaigns themselves are living, breathing animals once they heat up, but your campaign plan should pretty much stay the same.
3. Focus on the right stuff. It’s really easy to get caught up in the back and forth of a heated race and allow that to throw you off course. The best Democratic campaigns stay focused on directly communicating their message with targeted voters and turning them out. Period. Everything else is just noise.
4. Do the work. Running for office is hard. Doing what it takes to win is often even harder. Spending hours on the phone, asking for money every single day, is tough. Knocking on every targeted voters door is exhausting. But this is usually what it takes to win. The best way to jumpstart your campaign is to embrace the work and lean into it. You’re probably running because you want to represent your community—use this time to get to know them and ask them to join your campaign.
Some of the Most Innovative Nonprofit Marketing Campaigns to Inspire Your Creativity
Our third installment of our picks for innovative nonprofit marketing campaigns is here to inspire your creativity. This time, we have chosen four creative advertising campaigns that incorporate direct mail, video, and print advertising to convey important messages.
Your Non-Profit Web Presence and Learning from Big Think Tanks
CAP, Urban Institute, the Economic Policy Institute, and others are well-respected organizations that have a lot of authority with the press and on the web. We can learn a lot from big think tanks when it comes to your non-profit web presence.
Advocacy strategies have changed a lot over the last 20 years. When I was a chief of staff in the New York State Legislature, I don't remember there ever being a real advocacy campaign around public support of an issue that focused on legislators. The main way groups moved legislation was to hire a lobbyist and that was really it. There were occasional print ads and lobby days, but day-to-day mass contact from constituents that were driven by member groups were few and far between. Today, we spend a lot of time running advocacy campaigns on the state level. Issue advocacy tactics that were once only used on large, federal issues are now seen on smaller federal issues as well as state and municipal issues.
Getting the Most Out of Your Non-Profit Board of Directors
Running a non-profit is not easy. but your non-profit board can help your organization go from drab to fab. Fully utilizing your non-profit board can make the difference between a sluggish or vibrant organization. Here are some tips to up your board's performance and give them a meaningful experience.
Open up Your Campaign Toolbox, What Will You Find?
We understand what it’s like to operate a campaign on a tight budget, so we’ve found some free tools to include in your campaign toolbox to help you along the way. We hope you will find them useful as you launch your campaign or look for ways to better organize it. to ve clear no campaign tool will solve all of your campaigns problems. Whether fundraising for a nonprofit, managing an independent expenditure campaign, or seeking office, a few of these tools will surely help you along your way.
Online advocacy, digital advocacy whatever you call it we love it. These days, it seems like the options for any given online advocacy campaign are boundless. Do you cookie target? Geo-fence? Maybe hang out in the world of IP zone targeting? There’s always something new and different, and it can be overwhelming. One of the fairly simple choices you can make when you’re thinking about an online advocacy campaign is whether you want to buy through a specific publication, a network, or some combination of both.
These days, everyone is online. And if your nonprofit isn’t online, it should be! It’s easy, cheap and one of the best ways to stay engaged with your supporters. Here are five things we think every nonprofit should be doing online.
1. Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr. All of these are free for you to use, so why not? They are a fun, interactive way to communicate with your supporter base (who—spoiler alert—are already spending all their time on these platforms anyway). People love to promote causes they care about on Facebook especially, so make sure your cause is in the mix!
2. Online Fundraising: Online fundraising is a zillion times cheaper than other forms of fundraising. And many times, all it takes is adding a link to your website where people can donate. The trick is, you need to make sure that link is visible and easily accessible to people.
Our team is made up of amazing creative, organizational, and political consulting talent committed to achieving political and advocacy goals. We have worked for candidates and causes, big and small, all across the country.
