The cost of acquiring a new donor is increasing, and the average donor retention rate for first-year donors is between 22% and 29%. Eek! The bottom line is, it's much cheaper to keep your current donors than it is to acquire new ones.

Improving your donor relations (also called donor care or donor stewardship) is one of the most effective ways to increase your donor retention. But it does take some strategic work. If you increase your donor retention rate by just 10%, that can increase the lifetime value of your donor database by 200%!

Now that's a nice return on your investment.

Donor care is both an art and a science. There are some industry "best practices" that every nonprofit should do, but there’s also a whole lot of room to be creative. We're here to help you put the essentials of excellent donor stewardship into practice so you can build great relationships with your supporters and improve your fundraising.

Are you considering looking for corporate sponsors for an upcoming nonprofit event or program? The great news for nonprofits is that whatever you're doing, there’s a pretty good chance that there’s a company that wants to support and align with your mission and cause...and, most importantly in this case, is willing to financially support your efforts.

There's no cause too big, too small, or too obscure… someone out there will be excited to partner financially to help you reach your goals. You just have to figure out which business will be the perfect corporate sponsor for your cause.

BUT (and this is important) corporate sponsorships are supposed to be symbiotic relationships! True, many business owners and decision-makers are very charitable and generous, but they still want their business to benefit from their financial investment in your organization's efforts.

Unfortunately, many organizations fail to treat corporate sponsorships like a symbiotic relationship between a nonprofit and business. It's not hard to make your organization attractive to corporate sponsorship opportunities. With the right mindset, and a few good ideas, you'll have companies lining up to sponsor your next program or event.

Matching gifts offer incentives for both the nonprofit and the donors! Organizations enjoy basically doubling donation amounts, and donors get the satisfaction of knowing their contributions are going even further. If the matching gift comes from a business, the company gets to enjoy some tax breaks.

It’s a win-win-win situation!

Matching can be an excellent way for development professionals to boost their funding campaigns. It's surprising how many organizations leave money on the table by not helping their donors participate in corporate matching gift programs.

Let’s dive into the ways you can start taking advantage of corporate matching gifts right away.

Any development professional and fundraiser will tell you that networking is the not-so-secret key to nonprofit fundraising success. Easier said than done, right? You don't want to be one of "those" fundraisers who seem pushy or too forward about it all.

Some people are more natural networkers than others, but it's a skill that just about anyone can master. The most successful development professionals focus on sharpening their communication and networking skills so they can get the most out of all types of events and gatherings.

We rounded up some tips, tricks, and networking rules to help you take your skills to the next level.

Imagine a world in which all your apps and services worked seamlessly with all the data from your organization. A world in which you could quickly move from one app to another, and still see the same data, sitting gently in the proverbial cloud without time-sucking and soul-crushing imports and exports.

That’s just one of the many data dreams many have had in our sector for decades, and one that could be moving closer (though not completely) into reality.

Microsoft, in collaboration with non-profit organizations and other companies, have been leading an effort to develop the Nonprofit Common Data Model (CDM), with a goal of providing non-profit organizations, technology vendors, and technology consultants one common language to represent key data points and data entities within every non-profit organization.

Considering the huge array of nonprofit organizations, Is this something that could even be built? Even if this is technically feasible, how is it being built, and where can you better understand the benefits this could have for your organization?

We’re going to dive into some of the most common questions we’ve heard about Microsoft’s efforts around the Nonprofit CDM, share our own insights (though, we’re not Microsoft, so this is just our best interpretations), and provide some links to more details.