Wired Causes

You are browsing the archives of 2009 September.

Listening for Nonprofits in a Digital World View more presentations from kanter. As many of you know who read this blog, I am an early adopter of social media and set up my listening post 5 years ago to scan…

New approaches to marketing your charity, and more: Tuesday’s roundup

Based on Social Messenger Framework by David Lipscomb I’m getting ready for the WeAreMedia Webinar, a deeper dive on listening, and have been thinking about how you analyze what you hear and apply it. Also, how to avoid what Holly…

Happiness? by me.

Did you know can?

Yep.

According to this article, “Happiness: A Buyer’s Guide” by Drake Bennett:

A few researchers are looking again at whether happiness can be bought, and they are discovering that quite possibly it can – it’s just that some strategies are a lot better than others. Taking a friend to lunch, it turns out, makes us happier than buying a new outfit. Splurging on a vacation makes us happy in a way that splurging on a car may not… The problem isn’t money; it’s us. For deep-seated psychological reasons, when it comes to spending money, we tend to value goods over experiences, ourselves over others, things over people. When it comes to happiness, none of these decisions are right: The spending that make us happy, it turns out, is often spending where the money vanishes and leaves something ineffable in its place.

Dear fundraisers, this is good news.

The article (which is a must-read, if only to convince you it’s time to take out dear friends for dinner) draws ties to charity.  Giving to charity or “prosocial spending” makes you happy, it finds.  We’ve heard of this so-called “helper’s high” before.  Giving to charity makes you feel good, perhaps even euphoric.

Read the article and remember this: Asking for money is not about your need.  It’s about what you can make your donors feel—happy.  You’re in the business not only of doing good; you’re in the business of making people feel great.

Praise for unrestricted grants, plus more: Monday’s roundup

Web site seeks to spur nonprofit discussion

That’s a chair in my son’s kindergarten class from a couple of years ago. The intention was not to shame or punish the child for “mistakes” in behavior, but provide an opportunity for reflection and learning. Two weeks ago, I…