More than ever, strategic messaging is vital to both nonprofit and corporate communications. In today’s competitive nonprofit environment, organizations need to ask themselves the following questions, according to Rebecca K. Leet:

• Are we satisfied with how well our most important stakeholders listen to us? 
• Do we focus too much of our energies on how we communicate with audiences – technology – versus what we communicate? 

Hilborn FORA Executive Briefings, The Networked Nonprofit, Allison Fine, author and consultant. Thursday, September 30. Breakfast, author presentation and book to take home, 8 – 9:15 am; limited seating for small group consultation, 9:30 – 11:30 am. 88 Chestnut Conference Centre, Toronto. Option 1: Breakfast, presentation and a copy of Allison's new book, The Networked Nonprofit; Option 2: option 1 PLUS limited seating post-breakfast roundtable. Option 1, $97 +HST by September 10, $117 afterwards, Option 2, $277 by September 10, $307 afterwards. 

http://www.canadianfundraiser.com/workshop_Viewer.asp?workshop_ID=390

Yaniv Rivlin came to McGill from Israel as a Sauvé scholar, a program designed to develop leadership potential among international students. It wasn’t long before he found a way to lead his fellow students towards charitable contributions while they surfed the Web for their own purposes.

Earlier this summer after a year of development, Rivlin launched Comtribute, which allows charities to place their brand on toolbars and search engines. When someone runs a search, around three cents from the ad revenue of that search engine is donated to the charity. Rivlin told Montreal’s The Gazette that two searches a day for a year by 1,000 supporters who’ve downloaded the application can create $14,000 for the organization in a year. Google, Bing and Yahoo are all participating.

Are you running Web-based fundraising software that stores your data on your supplier’s server rather than your own? Are you considering such an arrangement? Then you need to be well-versed in the recordkeeping requirements that Canada’s Income Tax Act imposes on registered charities.

Section 230 (2) of the ITA requires a charity to keep its books and records in Canada. Technically, says charity law specialist Robert Hayhoe of Miller Thomson LLP, that section rules out storing your data outside Canada. 

Fortunately, there is what Hayhoe calls “a work-around.”

You don’t get many better chances to let donors know how you’re spending their money than through your newsletter. So you’re going to want to make sure your newsletter is something pretty special – the problem is most donor newsletters fail at giving the donors what they want.

And it’s not hard. Here are five easy ways to make your next donor newsletter pop.

Check your focus

Don’t suffer from Paris Hilton syndrome – “It’s all about me!” It’s not.