Two Books & An Article

If you are looking for resources on how to brand your organization or begin utilizing e-mail to raise money, here are a couple of books and an article that I'm sure you'll find helpful.

Branding for Nonprofits: Developing Identity with Integrity by DK Holland (Allworth Press)
This book explains what branding is not just a logo (a typical misconception) and provides a very practical guide for developing your brand from writing a design brief to getting key stakeholders on board with the concepts and even finding funding to support your branding initiatives.

The Mercifully Brief Real World Guide to Raising Thousands (if not tens of thousands) of Dollars with Email by Madeline Stanionis (Emerson & Church Real World Guides) What I love about this book is that it is packed with examples of successful fundraising e-mail appeals and Madeline's take on exactly why they worked. It is filled with suggestions that any organization, whether you currently have 50 e-mail addressess or 50,000, can easily use to improve results. I've known Madeline for a few years. She is a very creative, high energy, fun person who really cares about the work she does. Her personality comes through in the book. I cracked up when she was discussing testing and decided to out her inner geek. She said that she has spent many a Friday night playing with results to see what she could learn from them. I know I've done the same thing! Whether you are just getting started with e-fundraising or you've been doing it for while, I'm sure you'll get some great tips from this book - I did. Just a note - buy it from Amazon, the order form page at the the publisher's website, Emerson and Church, does not appear to be secure - not a good thing.

A Few Good ENewsletter Tools
I was one of the contributors to an article by Idealware, which provides comsumer report style reviews of nonprofit software. If you are just getting started with sending bulk e-mail, e-newsletters or e-solicitations, this article can help you identify some useful tools.
http://www.idealware.org/articles/fgt_email_newsletter_tools.php