NAMP News
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Laura Fredricks, a fundraising consultant, say she has noticed a disturbing trend. Too often fundraisers use the same formula to seek a gift, whether they are asking for $10,000 or $50,000, instead of tailoring each interaction with a potential donor to the person’s interests and values. That practice wastes time and ensures poor results.
Creativity is an under-celebrated superpower. You hear a lot in nonprofit circles about the importance of telling stories, of measuring our impact, collecting data on relevant metrics, and learning from experience. You hear a lot about the importance of having a coherent strategy, experimenting, and having a better attitude towards failure, about giving up control, engaging your community.
The closer you are to your customers, the more relevant your product will be and the more likely you make it for people to choose you. It may seem obvious, but the gap between those that do and those that talk is widening, despite the immediate bottom-line benefits. But more than this, companies that put usefulness at the heart of what they do become part of their customers' lives.
High tech merged with high culture Tuesday at The Art Institute of Chicago when Google, Inc. announced an upgrade to its Google Art Project initiative, adding thousands of works in dozens more countries.The project provides access to more than 30,000 ultra-high resolution images of paintings, sculptures, and photographs from 151 museums and other institutions in 40 countries.
Spent a lot of time learning about and building out your company's existing Facebook page? Oh well: It's pretty much being upended by March 30, whether you like it or not.
It's starting to feel as if this photo frenzy isn't just a passing phase. Maybe there's some inescapable human affection for pretty pictures. We just can't help ourselves. As Antony Young, CEO of Mindshare North America, put it in his recent column for Ad Age: We're seeing a consumer movement toward a more visual culture brought on by technology and media.
My sister-in-law maintains a list on her smartphone of companies she vows never to patronize again. She calls it her "shit list." It includes big national brands and small local companies and spans restaurants, hotels, Internet providers, airlines, retailers--practically any business with a service component. And she's not alone.
A small Philadelphia-based company called New Paradise Laboratories is re-creating theater for the connected generation. It's incorporating social networks like Facebook, Skype, and Chatroulette into the production and presentation of shows, pulling theater into the virtual space.
Recently, my colleagues have gone wild for Pinterest. Pinterest is an online sharing tool that allows you to construct virtual bulletin boards to collect and display images from across the web. While some museums are using the tool in clever public-facing ways, that's not what's happening here at the MAH. At our museum, our programs team is using Pinterest to develop ideas for upcoming community events.
Jeff Rosenblum is drinking tea at Soho House, a private club in lower Manhattan, and explaining to me that most advertising doesn't work, and that the entire advertising industry is stuck in the past and desperately needs to be blown up and reinvented-not exactly what I-d expected to hear from a guy who runs an advertising agency that counts Suzuki, Universal Theme Parks, Capital One, and General Mills among its clients.
