Your logo encapsulate your organization’s identity, and it’s what identifies you to the general public. Colors, fonts, shapes, and visual graphics should combine to be both eye-catching and memorable. A successful logo is simple in form, yet effectively illustrates a concept. Your logo should be practical yet original, and easily adaptable across a variety of platforms. In short, a logo should have a great concept and exceptional execution. Seems easy, right? However, creating a logo can be deceivingly hard to get right. Here at Elevation, we’ve put together a list of 6 fundamental tips to help guide you through the logo design process.

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The cyber security disasters large companies such as Home Depot and Target face seem far afield from the concerns and issues faced by nonprofits. However, similar to major corporations, nonprofits are a feeding ground of financial and personal information on which hackers are eager to prey.

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It’s that time of year again. Year-end fundraising campaigns are in full-swing and #Giving Tuesday is right around the corner. These last few months have proven to be the most crucial for nonprofits in terms of fundraising as donations revenues soar to unprecedented amounts in this last year-end push. This past year proved that these final months are an integral element of a nonprofit’s success with revenues increasing 63% from 2013 to 2014 on #GivingTuesday.

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Around this time of year, nonprofits are in full-swing for year-end fundraising. With nearly 50% of all fundraising coming from the last 3 months of the year, it’s no wonder why nonprofits have a big push at the end. At Elevation, come October and November, we start getting questions from nonprofits on how they can optimize their websites for better results.

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1. No Consent

If you’re wary whether or not you have consent to Signs you don’t have customer consent, ask yourself these 2 important questions:

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Editor’s Note: This week’s blog post is brought to you by Donor Pro’s Vice President of Marketing, Roy Cheran. DonorPro is a nonprofit software company that provides award-winning fundraising and donor management software for nonprofits all over the world. 

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The 2016 Presidential campaign is in full swing as Democratic and Republican primary debates start to pick up and hopefuls launch their campaigns. We always hear about how difficult running a presidential campaign can prove to be. Candidates must develop their campaign which includes building a platform, choosing a slogan, designing a logo, etc. From there it’s all about planning and execution; reaching out to individuals and community members asking for their support, promoting their platform, developing a social media strategy, campaign fundraising, and building a website to generate results.

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In last week’s blog post, I highlighted 3 proven-to-succeed content marketing strategies for nonprofits. Finishing the second half of this two-part series, I’ll introduce 3 more techniques dipping into some unique alternatives for producing and marketing content for your nonprofit website.

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At the heart of every nonprofit is a story. Inspired by an idea, born from a moment, and created from experience, your nonprofit’s story is the foundation of your organization, and the platform from where you drive donor engagement, cement community involvement, and generate measurable change. For many nonprofits and their nonprofit websites, the intuitive approach would be to tell their story in the nonprofit “About Us” page, where visitors go to learn about a nonprofit. It’s comforting to believe that if you follow a predetermined, logical protocol, people will learn about your cause on your nonprofit website, and want to support its cause. However, this couldn’t be farther from what you should be doing.

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Every great nonprofit has an equally great brand. Think about Livestrong or the American Red Cross, for example. These iconic nonprofits have such successful brands that we immediately associate images, colors, emotions, and memories with these organizations. Whether they invested thousands of dollars in graphic designers to pin-point these seemingly perfect brands, or it took a moment of clarification for the idea to come to fruition, these brands resonate online and in-print, across ages, and all over the world.

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As Part III of our blog series on Call to Actions comes to fruition, let’s reflect on what we’ve concluded up until now. We’ve mulled over 6 vital optimization tips, and we’ve jumped headfirst into 3 case studies of credible nonprofits and how their CTAs could improve. In these 2 info-packed articles, we’ve covered a lot of ground, reiterated and emphasized key points, and provided a plethora of tips and strategies. In light of talking about different tips and examples on improving your nonprofit’s Call to Action, it’s equally important to point out what not to do.

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1. Screenshot Test

Take a screenshot of your nonprofit’s home page and ask 5-10 people (depending on how many volunteers you can gather) to look at the image for 5 seconds. After 5 seconds, have them tell you as much as they can about the home page.

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