MKCREATIVE

#INTERVIEW: Jeff Brooks, Nonprofit Blogger, Author, and Creative Director

Jeff Brooks has been working on behalf of nonprofits for more than 20 years and passionately blogging about fundraising since 2005. He writes the Future Fundraising Now blog and is creative director at TrueSense Marketing. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.

MKC: What do you consider to be the greatest challenge of being a good copywriter?

JEFF: What most people who are not professional copywriters get wrong is they don’t differentiate themselves from their audience. That’s why most fundraising is just bad. It doesn’t succeed the way it ought to because they say, I’m going to make this please me, and then it’ll please the others and then it’ll work. Well, that’s just wrong. That’s not how you create quality fundraising. You have to know your audience, and reach out to them, and 99 percent of the time, you’re going to hate it. You may say, I wouldn’t respond to this! And you’re absolutely correct, and it absolutely doesn’t matter.

Now If you want to talk about professional copywriters, I think what is difficult is taking dry, distilled- down-to-numbers program information and making it sing. Because that’s what you tend to get delivered: We fed this many people, and that’s up x percent from last year. That’s the kind of information you get and you have to say, how do I make somebody care? That’s the minute-by-minute challenge a copywriter faces.

MKC: I’ve been reading your blog for awhile and you’ve been preaching donor-centricity adamantly. Do you get the sense that anybody’s listening?

JEFF: Some people are. The thing is, the people who are reading my blog, or reading blogs at all, are the ones who are curious, who want to grow, and who are willing to change. The ones who need the help, who aren’t donor-centric, aren’t reading anybody’s blog. They’re not curious. So there’s sort of a preaching-to-the-choir quality to blogging.

In the fundraising industry, we are not donor-centric. We are navel gazers, and we expect our donors to gaze at our navels with us. I think that’s why direct mail response rates have been dropping for seven years in a row now. It’s because what we’re doing just doesn’t work like it used to. It’s wearing out. We’ve got a new audience of direct mail donors coming on board and they are more demanding. They want to be communicated with. In their commercial relationships with the companies they buy stuff from, they’re used to service and they’re used to being talked to as who they are. Most fundraising isn’t there. It’s saying, here’s your cancer bill. Pay it. That used to work, for a few reasons. One was, the older generation was more duty-driven: You give because you’re supposed to, you give because your church tells you to, you give because your family has always given. You didn’t have to be skillful at asking a person like that, they would just say, yeah, it’s my time to give. Not only that, but the competition in the mailbox has skyrocketed. There are probably 10 times as many appeals being sent out now as there were 20 years ago. So there’s that overwhelming noise, and the fact that younger donors, and I say younger meaning under 70, are a little more discerning. We actually see a behavior of larger gifts to fewer organizations. In the older donors, 70 and up, there’s just this behavior of sending 15 or 20 bucks to everything that comes across your door. Younger donors are saying, I need to be involved here, I need to know what’s going on, I need to care. So if we don’t get on board with talking to donors, instead of talking to ourselves, we’re in big trouble.

MKC: You also seem to have some strong feelings about nonprofit advertising. Would you like to talk about it?

JEFF: You’re talking about the “Stupid Nonprofit Ads” series. That is really about what I think is a huge scam perpetrated by ad agencies and other brand experts on the nonprofit sector. They bring commercial branding and advertising practices into the nonprofit realm and then misapply them. The reason it keeps happening again and again and again is it’s the glamour of the ad world: these are the big boys, this is where the real money is, they must know what they’re talking about, right? So they come in – and very often its pro bono so the nonprofit thinks, what the hell, I might as well do it, and they get these terrible ads that have no chance of making a dent in the problems of this world and motivating donors to do anything or care, much less give. So I kind of go after it, and I’m pretty mean about it, but it’s because I feel like it’s a big con, and we need it to stop. Plus I just like making fun of stupid stuff.

MKC: Is there anybody who does good advertising for nonprofits?

JEFF: Oh yeah, a lot of people do, and it will never win an award. No one’s ever going to show it anywhere, because it’s “bland,” it’s “ugly,” it’s “old-fashioned,” but it raises money.

MKC: Tom Ahern raves about the Domain Group formula for newsletters and he keeps saluting your role in it.

JEFF: We were doing mostly direct mail at Domain, and sometimes a client would say, could you do a newsletter for us? We don’t have anyone on staff to do it. When we did them, we made money. And at that time, the normal thing was for a newsletter to lose money. We started sharpening the techniques, we did some testing. We found that to be relentlessly donor-focused was critical, that to not be afraid to ask for money was good. I have a lot of clients where you can almost count on a newsletter being a more effective fundraiser than a direct mail appeal is. That’s not true across the board, but I have not lost money on a newsletter in decades. They are an effective fundraiser. The difference is, the old newsletter said, Look at us, aren’t we cool, look at all our great programs. The articles were long and boring, the headlines were dull. We found, just like in direct mail appeals, you had to get your eyes off yourself and on the audience. The reason they’re giving is they want to change the world, so you need to tell them, yes, you are changing the world, instead of, look at us, we’re changing the world. You still tell a story about their cool program, but you turn it a little bit, so it’s, ‘Look, donor, here’s what you made possible.’ You do that in subtle ways and direct, flat-out ways.

MKC: Has anyone attempted to convert the Domain Group formula to email newsletters?

JEFF: I’m trying to. I mean, we try to bring the techniques and the mindset. Email is a little different. I don’t think we’ve quite got it figured out. For now, email newsletters are nothing like as effective as print newsletters as fundraisers, and they’re less effective as fundraisers than e-appeals are.

MKC: You have been blogging since 2005. Have your goals for blogging changed?

JEFF: No, not really. The difference is, when I started, there were maybe three other bloggers in the fundraising space, and way fewer readers. Now I think there are over 100 fundraising-focused bloggers that I know about. I feel like I discover another one every week or so. And there’s just a larger audience. Thousands of people read these blogs now. That’s kind of cool. That means there’s an ongoing professional conversation happening. Before, the national conferences were the only place professional conversation happened, and most people weren’t going to those. So it was way less widespread than it is now. This is good. It means more people are able to get smarter.
Fundraising is a weird medium. A lot of things are counter-intuitive. Things work that you wouldn’t think would work, like longer letters work better than shorter letters. And there’s just a thousand little details like that. Some fundraisers seem to say, ‘We need to throw out everything we know, because it just seems so wrong to me.’ Then they watch their revenue go down the drain. This is very sad, because this isn’t just some stupid shampoo sales campaign. This matters. When you screw up, it matters that you screwed up. It means you can’t serve the way you’re called to serve. There’s a moral dimension to it.

You can follow Jeff on his Future Fundraising Now blog.

Guest blogger Don Akchin writes frequently about marketing and philanthropy at donakchin.com.

This interview series is produced with the generous support of the Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising Zone.

Popularity: 5% | Category Blogs, Campaigns, Communications, Copyrighting, Cross-Post, Development, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Grants and Funding, Interview, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications Design, Research, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Writing | | 0 Comments

Written by: Don Akchin

#Communications: Postal Rates Raised Last Week – Not For Nonprofits

January 26th, 2012

The United States Postal Service has been struggling financially for the last few years. The Bush Administration saddled the service with pre-paying its future retiree benefits for a decade (2006-2016), a demand uniquely imposed on the USPS. Bush’s policy meant the service went from profits in the $1.4 billion range in 2005 to one that has laid off thousands of works, closed numerous branches, and still needs to raise postal rates in an effort just to stay open. So what he did to the postal service he did to the country.

This past Monday many postal rates changed. For example, first-class mail went up by a penny and its guaranteed one-day delivery (depending on distance) was removed. Or perhaps you didn’t notice?

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Popularity: 3% | Category Advice, Campaigns, Civics, Communications, Community, Direct Mail, E-Mail, Fundraising, Interview, Marketing, Marketing Budget, Marketing Skills, Measurement, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Newsletter, Newspaper Article, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Politics, Publications, Strategic Marketing, Web and Print | | 0 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Interview: Gail Perry, Fundraising Consultant, Trainer & Author of Fired-Up Fundraising

January 5th, 2012

Gail Perry is a fundraising consultant and trainer and the author of Fired-Up Fundraising: Turn Your Board’s Passion into Action. She is a highly sought speaker and writes a popular blog. Her most recent venture is an online coaching group. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.

MKC: What are the issues that are keeping your clients awake at night?

GAIL: I think the economy is just a huge issue. People are worried about whether they can raise the money they need or not. But I’m also seeing a really interesting problem. My consulting clients are struggling to learn how to take donors who are identified as potential major prospects and bring them into the major prospect arena by closing a gift. It’s a very delicate, step-by-step, intuitive process to bring a major donor along. That’s a lot of what I’m teaching my clients, all these little subtleties of developing that type of relationship.

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Popularity: 31% | Category Blogs, Campaigns, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Crowdfunding, Design, Development, Direct Mail, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Interview, Major Gifts, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Research, SEO, Social Media, Sponsorship, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Twitter, Web Design, Writing | | 1 Comments

Written by: Don Akchin

#Interview: Howard Adam Levy, Principal of Red Rooster Group

December 7th, 2011

Howard Adam Levy is Principal of Red Rooster Group, a New York City-based branding, marketing and design agency for nonprofits. Howard, who began working with nonprofits as a graphic designer in 1991, founded the agency 10 years ago. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit blog.

MKC: What is most challenging about branding nonprofits?

HOWARD: Nonprofits face a wide variety of constituents, from clients, referral sources, donors, partner organizations, board members and others. So a lot more is involved in reaching out and developing messages and strategies for each of those audiences.

Businesses, especially small businesses, can make unilateral decisions on their marketing. Nonprofits are typically more consensus oriented. And particularly when it comes to the brand, you really want to get everyone’s input and have a feeling that everyone is contributing to the process of what we’re all about. So you need a process that can build consensus in a politically neutral environment and get everyone feeling really good about the brand and their role as brand ambassadors.

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Popularity: 6% | Category Blogs, Branding, Campaigns, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Design, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Graphic Design, Interview, Major Gifts, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications Design, Slide Presentations, Social Media, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Web Design, Writing | | 1 Comments

Written by: Don Akchin

#HowTo: Online Anonymity & Security Pivotal For Holiday Season

November 25th, 2011

We don’t intend to be scare-mongers on this blog with so many stories on internet/cloud security. A minority of us will ever have our organization’s site hacked or email breached. The thing is, preventing such invasions is not especially difficult but prevention is a dynamic endeavor. As technology changes, and hackers’ tools changes with it, your organization must adjust accordingly. And once your information is compromised, you’ll desperately wish you had taken a few steps of prevention earlier.

Last week we discussed the need to secure passwords and to vary them across sites because our information is not so much ‘anonymous’ as ‘pseudononymous.’ Aggregates can be used to build up a coherent image of online you by pulling bits from a few frequented sites. We also noted that we would continue the story by looking at the need for security and anonymity for the networked machine – which is what we turn to today.

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Popularity: 7% | Category Advice, Campaigns, Case Study, Communications, Desktop Apps, E-Mail, How-to, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Research, Resource, Reviews, Site Administration, Social Media, Software Review, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits | | 2 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Interview: Michael Stein, Author, Blogger, & Veteran Nonprofit Technology Strategist

November 16th, 2011

Michael Stein, Senior Account Executive for Donordigital, is a veteran nonprofit technology strategist whose areas of expertise include online fundraising, email messaging, email list growth, blogging, website content, mobile messaging, and social media. With Nick Allen and Mal Warwick, Michael wrote the groundbreaking 1997 book Fundraising on the Internet: Recruiting and Renewing Donors Online.

The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit blog.

MKC: How did you get into this field?

Michael: About 20 years ago, I was working for an environmental group just as the Internet started to emerge. I got in on the ground floor, building bulletin board systems for Greenpeace activists and others tracking toxic chemical emissions around the U.S. I helped build the pioneering Internet provider called IGC.org that trained nonprofits to use the Internet, which then morphed into the first experiments in online fundraising on the Web for Rainforest Action Network. In the mid-1990s, I hooked up with legendary direct mail fundraisers Mal Warwick and Nick Allen, and we started to think about what the future of fundraising might look like with the evolving Internet. Together we wrote the first book about fundraising online.

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Popularity: 9% | Category Advertising, Advice, Blogs, Branding, Campaigns, Communications, Community, Copyrighting, Cross-Post, Database, Development, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Interview, iPad/Tablet, Major Gifts, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Public Relations, Social Media, Storytelling, Technology, Tools, Twitter, Writing | | 0 Comments

Written by: Don Akchin

#SocialNetworks: What Should You Expect From Your Online Outreach?

November 7th, 2011

ROI can offer profits in income, in personel and skills, and in reputation

Whether we invest time, money, other capital, or any combination of them, we want to see some results come from the investment. For nonprofits in particular, time – often given by volunteers or interns – is especially valuable, as these organizations want to leverage the good-will effort into new donors, rising contributions, and good work in the community.

Writing a tweet might seem like hardly any investment at all, what with its 140-characters delimiting your typing time. Yet nonprofits are sending tweets regularly, and are likely keeping up blogs, and certainly should be sending email blasts. Now we’re talking some real time and money. How do you know you are getting a return on that investment (ROI)? Mark Paddock at SocialMediaToday.com outlines some measurements.

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Popularity: 3% | Category Advice, Blogs, Communications, Community, Development, E-Mail, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Site Administration, Social Media, Twitter | | 0 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Fundraising: To Bring Donations In, Keep Sending Emails Out

November 2nd, 2011

With all the buzz about social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, we can lose track of tried-and-true outreach tools. Though these other platforms might be great ways to advertise events or spread late-breaking news about your organization’s work, they are not proving to be efficient fundraising instruments (yet?). John Haydon at Inbound Zombie and Razoo Fundraising has been crunching numbers to demonstrate the fact that email remains the best way not only to bring in donations, but to bring in bigger donations.

What makes email, the communications platform that seems oh-so-90s, so successful as a fundraising platform?

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Popularity: 3% | Category Advertising, Advice, Campaigns, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community, Development, Direct Mail, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, Fundraising, How-to, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Media Review, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Reviews, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Web and Print | | 0 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#ProAging: Touchscreen Ease Available For Those Who Don’t Want An iPad

October 18th, 2011

Click to enlarge

The iPad has inspired many older Americans to expand not only their computing skills, but also their short-term memories and their social(-media) circles. Nevertheless, the iPad was not created with our oldest citizens in mind. The screen is not especially large, for example.

The computer company Telikin in Chalfont, PA is developing a desktop machine for the GI and Silent Generations. Humans interact via the large touchscreen, and the software interface includes large clear buttons that give users easy access to email, Facebook, calendars, and other applications, like local weather, that seniors might find handy. But apparently the computer is even finding adherents from among younger generations who simply want an easy way to interact with some of the staples of the online universe.

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Popularity: 5% | Category Aging, Apple, Boomers, Campaigns, Civics, Communications, Community, E-Mail, GI Generation, Grandparents, Hardware Review, iDevice, Internet, iPad/Tablet, Marketing, Reviews, Seniors Life, Social Media, Software Review, Technology, Technology for Aging | | 0 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Interview: Tiffany Applegate, Co-Founder of X Factor Consulting – Enhancing the Sustainability of Nonprofit Organizations

October 14th, 2011

Tiffany Applegate is co-founder of X Factor Consulting, which works to enhance the sustainability of nonprofit organizations. With her marketing degree and MBA, she left the corporate world for the nonprofit sphere, and has been consulting since 2005. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEmedia blog.

MKC:  On your website, you focus a lot on sustainability.  I thought that sustainability was just a fancier word for fundraising, but clearly you mean something broader than that. Can you tell me about that?

TIFFANY:  A lot of people do think that in order to be sustainable they just need money. But we’ve worked with and talked to a lot of organizations that may have an endowment or what they think is a large amount in cash reserves, but things happen and the funds runs out, and since they haven’t focused on sustainability they’re no longer able to survive. We’ve also seen many organizations that have a large government grant, and then when the administration changes,  the focus of the grant program changes,  so they lose their money and the organization is gone,  because they haven’t focused on sustainability.
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Popularity: 3% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Interview, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Sustainability | | 0 Comments

Written by: Don Akchin

#Fundraising: Online/Mobile Donations Still Need The Personal Touch

October 6th, 2011

Apple's online memorial

First and foremost, we must mark the death of Steve Jobs, former CEO at Apple, who died of pancreatic cancer yesterday at the age of 56. He helped build a great computing tool. He reconfigured the way movies are made. He revitalized a music industry about to die on the reef of file-sharing, and he inspired a phenomenally innovative company to strive always to outdo itself. Our thoughts are with his family and close friends who have helped each other through these final months.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. Stanford University commencement address in 2005.

One of the worlds his products opened up to us was mobile communication. The iPhone for sure, but even the accessibility of the laptop in the early 1990s and the tablet today. And mobile communications have offered a new realm of possibility for spreading information and encouraging donations for nonprofits.

Nevertheless, a few old-school skills can go a long way, even in the realm of instant digital communication.

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Popularity: 3% | Category Campaigns, Communications, Crowdfunding, Development, Direct Mail, E-Mail, Fundraising, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Site Administration, Social Media, Web and Print | | 0 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Interview: Steve Frillmann, Executive Director, Green Guerillas

August 21st, 2011

A community garden created by local residents with the help and support of Green Guerillas

This is a repost of an article that originally appeared on the MKCREATIVE blog in March, 2010.

Each month we look at a marketing challenge faced by many of our clients. This month the issue is when, or if, to switch from print to web-based and social media, and we chose to present it through the eyes of one of our clients. We recently spoke with Steve Frillmann, executive director of Green Guerillas, a nonprofit organization that supports hundreds of community gardens (and gardeners) in New York City.

We’ve been working with the Green Guerillas for nearly 15 years, a relationship that began when Marco Kathuria (MKCREATIVE’s Creative Director & Social Media Strategist) volunteered as photographer/videographer for a project working with children to create colorful murals within community gardens in New York City. Out of that relationship came a realization of a “shared DNA” – a commitment to enrich the lives of city residents, one neighborhood at time. The collaboration with the Green Guerillas evolved into the creation of the organization’s graphic identity and communications toolkit. The marketing mix and the strategic direction it has taken has evolved over the years as a result of the close collaboration between MKCREATIVE and Steve Frillmann.

We began our conversation by asking Steve to give us his perspective on how he sees the Social Media:Direct Mail mix for his own organization, considering that converting one’s communications from print to social media channels is all the rage in business and nonprofit circles. But how useful is a great website if the bulk of your constituents visit the Web infrequently, or never? (more…)

Popularity: 29% | Category Advice, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Environment, Greening, How-to, Interview, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Revitalization, Social Media, Sustainability, Urban Farming | | 1 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Communications: Tips On Engaging & Retaining Your Social Media Constituents

June 5th, 2011

If you have been following our blog for a little while, then you are likely engaged in social networks for your nonprofit, charity, or business. We have sought to provide advice and guidance both by drawing on our experience and by putting our readers in touch with other experts in the field.

Today we happily return to some foundational issues to bring readers to your social-media outreach program, and to keep them connected to your organization. Never hurts to be reminded of some of the basic tenets of social-networking communications.

Ellisa Nauful of Ballywho Interactive reminds us of the need to be brief, bright, and playful. “Our social networks are a marketing tool, but they’re not the place to regurgitate marketing collateral. Save the brochure-speak for…brochures.”

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Popularity: 3% | Category Advice, Blogs, Communications, E-Mail, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Permission Marketing, Social Media | | 0 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Social Media: Are We Engaged or Distracted? Both?

June 3rd, 2011

Sorry to interrupt, but...

Social media can take a great deal of our time and attention. But is that time and attention being taken away from being productive at work or being engaged with our surroundings? A recent survey from Harmon.ie, as reported at FastCompany.com, demonstrates how digital interactions often are digital distractions. And the distractions add up to over $10,000 in productivity losses per employee over the year.

How do the numbers break out and how have people responded to the not-so-surprising news? Can we have some cake and eat it too?

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Popularity: 4% | Category Communications, E-Mail, Marketing, News and Current Affairs, Report, Research, Resource, Social Media, Technology | | 0 Comments

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

Communications: Telling Stories To Touch Lives & Raise Money

May 16th, 2011

Telling and listening to stories is what we humans do. The story could be about our morning commute or about three Russian brothers wrestling with their rocky relationships after the murder of their cantankerous father. But what makes either of those stories compelling is the opportunity for story teller to touch the experiences, expectations, and aspirations of the audience.

Nonprofits tell stories as a means to call people to action. Though story-telling might be as natural as our desire for food, telling a compelling story requires planning and practice. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is popularly attributed with the statement, “The death of one is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” The fact is, though, nonprofits and charities have to find ways to turn the statistics of their causes into meaningful human stories. (more…)

Popularity: 3% | Category Campaigns, Communications, Community, Development, E-Mail, Fundraising, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Resource, Storytelling, Study, Writing | | Comments Off

Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD

#Tech: The Apple Mac Mini Server – Part 1

March 25th, 2011

Scott Caldarelli shares some of his insights about setting up a Mac Mini Server, a stable and inexpensive way to allow your organization’s computers to share files, schedules, and projects, even when some colleagues are not in the office.

Happy (Tech.) Friday. In my last story, I briefly mentioned the Mac Mini Server as a good option for the small business or for any not-for-profit that wants to keep costs as low as possible while still utilizing the many capabilities of a server.

The Mac Mini Server is priced at $999 and comes standard with Apple’s own Snow Leopard Server operating system and software. There is only one version of Snow Leopard Server – the unlimited client version. This convenience alone is a great cost savings over a Windows server and client licenses. What that means is, once you have your server set, you don’t have to worry about buying a new user license if you’re adding someone to your organization. You simply add the new user to the server’s list of names and passwords.

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Popularity: 35% | Category Apple, Communications, E-Mail, Hardware Review, Resource, Software Review, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits | | Comments Off

Written by: Scott Caldarelli

Tech: The Value of an IT Partner for Nonprofit Organizations

March 4th, 2011

My Apple Technology consulting company, scott caldarelli consulting limited, has been supporting MKCREATIVE and its clients for some time now, so it’s a thrill to be able to share some of the lessons I’ve learned and the insights I’ve developed over the last few years, especially when it comes to supporting consultants and community-based organizations.

Specifically, I’m going to be exploring technology — hardware, software, troubleshooting tips, how-tos –  over the next months. My focus will be what you can do to maximize your organization’s infrastructure reliability and minimize procurement and maintenance costs.

A bit about myself first. I became interested in computers and in Apple’s Macintosh computers as an audio engineer. At that time, the best recordings were made on analog tape that held 24 tracks, each reel could record about 15 minutes and each reel cost $150-$200.  Then I saw someone edit a stereo master track on a computer. He just highlighted what he wanted to go away, hit delete and it was done. I was a convert.

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Popularity: 3% | Category Advice, Apple, Communications, Cross-Post, Database, E-Mail, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Tools | | Comments Off

Written by: Scott Caldarelli

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