Posts by: Gabe Cooper
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The Nonprofit Guide to Testing and Optimization
by: Gabe Cooper
“Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn’t mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.” – Evgeny Morozov Our final blog post in
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The Power of Donor-Centric Thinking
by: Gabe Cooper
The world’s most innovative nonprofits are constantly getting feedback from their constituents (donors, partners and the people they are serving). They deliberately operate with donor-centric thinking driving all initiatives and activities. It’s impossible to monitor your effectiveness if your team isn’t consistently soliciting feedback from the people you serve – and then rethinking your services from
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4 Agile Startup Practices Empowering Nonprofits
by: Gabe Cooper
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein Part 2 in our blog series on innovation focuses on fast innovation using Agile Methodologies. Many of our readers may be unfamiliar with the term “Agile” or “Agile Development.” The origins of Agile come from
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3 Tech Startup Principles that Will Transform Your Nonprofit
by: Gabe Cooper
Do you ever feel like your nonprofit is living in the dark ages when it comes to technology and innovation? Our team has been building technology for nonprofits for over a decade. And after working with hundreds of nonprofits, we’ve found one thing to be consistently true: nonprofits are bad at change. Most nonprofits resist
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4 Marketing Automation Workflows That Drive Generosity
by: Gabe Cooper
In my line of work I spend most of my time thinking about the intersection of fundraising and technology. I’m constantly looking for new technologies capable of helping charities inspire generosity. And, in my opinion, Marketing Automation is the most powerful (and underutilized) new fundraising technology available on the market today. Marketing automation is simply
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3 Key Lessons for Nonprofit Innovation and Facebook Horses
by: Gabe Cooper
So, my dad is on Facebook… which you would find SHOCKING if you knew my dad. See, my dad’s a child of the 60’s. He listened to Bob Dylan, hitchhiked across the country, spent time at Haight-Ashbury, the whole nine yards. But, like many in his generation, he is largely a technology neophyte. He’s perpetually 15 years behind
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The Virtuous Worldview Part 2: How Virtuous is Re-imagining Generosity
by: Gabe Cooper
In part one of my “Virtuous Worldview” blog, I wrote about how a handful of modern nonprofits are reimagining generosity. I discussed how the best and brightest of this new breed of charity understand two key principles related to generosity: Generosity is deeply personal: we all give based on personal relationships and passions. Everyone is a giver: philanthropy
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Five Features Agencies Need out of a Nonprofit CRM
by: Gabe Cooper
At Virtuous, we’re all about helping charities raise more money and do more good. This means valuing all of the people involved in the fundraising process from start to finish. We recognize that agency partners are crucial to any charity’s success, and as a result, we’re committed to helping agencies better serve their nonprofit customers.
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The Virtuous Worldview Part 1 : How Virtuous is Re-imagining Generosity
by: Gabe Cooper
Occasionally, I get asked how Virtuous is “different” from other nonprofit CRMs. I thought it might be helpful to write a couple blog posts that outline our particular views on generosity software. Part of the Virtuous value lies in the fact that our software team builds beautiful, easy-to-use software. That said, these blog posts won’t focus on
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Trends for Scaling Donor Relationships
by: Gabe Cooper
FUNDRAISING TRENDS In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Curt Swindoll outlines four trends that are revolutionizing how nonprofits work. We recommend reading the whole thing, but in the meantime we wanted to highlight two of his key points. Both of these principals should exist at the heart of any great nonprofit CRM or donor management system. DONOR