Ian Joyce showed up at Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation after a robust and distinguished career in corporate marketing and communications. He brought that mindset to his new work in social good. But he found there was a missing piece—a pipeline.  

Three years ago, we were in Russia. How the world has changed.  

We traveled to Russia for ten days to teach social fundraising to Moscow-based nonprofits and promote the release of the Russian translation of our book, Dollar Dash. We left with new friends and the expectation that we would return someday soon. Many of our Russian friends have now fled the country. They live in Lisbon, Istanbul, Tbilisi, and elsewhere, unsure of their futures. 

Our Turnkey team was with 100-ish nonprofit professionals this past week at the NonProfit POWER Conference in Philadelphia. I gave a presentation on how one’s identity is strengthened by being part of a community — how engaging with like-minded community members is validating and rewarding, the reason people seek out communities to be a part of.

To celebrate the upcoming release of Turnkey’s Katrina VanHuss & Otis Fulton, Ph.D.’s new book Social Fundraising: How to Mine the New Peer-to-Peer Landscape, we are giving you a sneak preview of one of our favorite topics; Recruiting (and Keeping) Volunteer Leaders & Fundraisers.

History is unfolding before us; it’s on C-SPAN and most cable news outlets. How can we use what we’re witnessing to help us in social good? Repeat to yourself... people respond to situations. Great marketing and program design create situations that trigger the types of attitudes and behaviors that we’re seeing as a result of the January 6th hearings.

There I am—sitting in another all-vendor meeting. I hear about all the exciting things the mission side of the house is up to. I feel more connected to the cause than ever before.

We recently wrote about the unfortunate results of “siloing” events and event participants. By doing so we prevent the participant from connecting to the mission, to make the mission a part of their identity.

We have defined “our community” as “the people on our email list” for a long time, but that’s not what community is all about. To our credit, we knew that they (people on our email list) cared about one thing—our mission.

It was addictive. I wanted to continue that feeling. It was such an incredible feeling. I wanted more and more. It became something that I loved.

In the past months, we’ve read a lot of “takeaways from the pandemic” articles. So many, in fact, that we thought adding one more to the conversation might be redundant. At the same time, we are still reading them, and it looks like you are too. So here is our take on what we learned.

I am the mother of a thirty-year-old with Down syndrome, autism, and type 1 diabetes. Like me, I'm sure you've been asked to help fundraise for an organization dedicated to helping your loved one. And you thought, “We have a really rare situation. Will anyone donate if this isn’t part of their life?”