How to Create a Facebook Page for Your Non-Profit

If you're one of those few people who have managed to avoid creating a Facebook account, you may want to reconsider, especially when it comes to the success of your non-profit. Facebook has quickly become one of the most successful venues for non-profits to fundraise and interact with their donors and volunteers in a fun, personal manner.

The Humane Society of the United States raises more than $200,000 each year from their Facebook efforts alone and focuses about 70% of all their social media efforts solely on Facebook.

Facebook is a proven, viable market for non-profits to drum up additional donations and if you're not taking advantage of this social network yet, you're missing out.

Here's how to set up your non-profit's facebook account in just a few easy steps.

Step 1: Create a Facebook Account. If you don't have a Facebook account already, it's time to join the masses and get on board. Just go to www.facebook.com to sign up.

Step 2. Create a Facebook Non Profit Page. Once you have created your facebook account, you need to Create a Page for your non-profit. Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ to get started. Click on "Cause or Community."

Step 3. Fill in Your Non-Profit's Information. Fill in your Non-Profit's name in the blank and agree to the Facebook terms. You'll then be asked to fill in additional information about your non-profit such as a brief description and a website.

Step 4. Upload a Profile Image. Your profile image must be at least 180 x 180 pixels. This is a great place to put your non-profit's logo. Click here for some additional resources from Facebook's help section on setting up your profile image.

Step 5. Upload a Cover Photo. Once your page is created, you have the option of uploading a cover image. This is the larger image that appears at the top of your page. This is a great place to put an image that represents your cause. The image size must be 851 x 315 and the image should be less than 100 kilobytes. Click here for more information on setting up your cover photo.

Step 6. Plan Interesting Content and Post! Now that your page is ready, it's time to start using it. Having a general plan about the kind of information you'd like to post is generally a good idea. You want to create a place where donors and volunteers who are passionate about your cause can come and discover current information about your non-profit. Feel free to post about any events or drives that you are currently running. Have fun with it!

Step 6. Invite People to Like Your Page. Get the word out about your page! Whether by inviting people through Facebook, word of mouth, or email, it's important that you continue to drive people to your non-profit's Facebook page.

Creating a Facebook page for your non-profit may seem like an intimidating task if you're not very tech savvy, but it's actually a very simple process. If you are feeling uneasy about it or want help, you can always ask a friend or relative who's familiar with Facebook to help.There are also many companies who offer social media services, such as creating and managing your Facebook page for you.

5 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Start a Non-Profit

So you want to start a new non-profit. Congratulations! It can certainly be one of the most rewarding and life-changing moments of your life when you see your efforts make a difference in the world.

However, starting a new non-profit is never easy, so before you rush into anything, here are five essential questions you need to ask yourself to make sure you're making the right decision.

1. Do You Have the Skills to Start a Non-Profit? Running a non-profit is just like running a business. It takes an organized, creative, hard-working individual who's comfortable with all the requirements of running a financially sound and entrepreneurial-driven organization. You'll need to coordinate volunteers, track donations, attract donors and investors, create a marketing strategy, and much, much more. Make sure that you are prepared for the heavy-lifting before you start your new non-profit.

2. Is Your Cause Unique? Chances are, your cause may already be claimed by another non-profit in your area so do your research to check to make sure you're not duplicating efforts with someone else. If there is someone already working with your desired cause, consider joining forces with that organization instead of going through all the hardship to start your own non-profit.

3. Do You Have a Mission Statement? Before you begin your new non-profit, you need to formulate a clear mission statement that conveys your organization's purpose. This helps you stay on track as well as lets people know what your organization does and who or what it's helping.

4. Do You Have Help? Attracting volunteers to your cause is a vital piece of non-profit success. Starting a non-profit on your own is a tough situation, and it's better to find a few savvy people who believe in your cause to help get the organization off the ground.

5. Do You Qualify as a Non-Profit Legally? Filing the proper paperwork to officially be recognized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit can involve a lot of legwork and waiting, so before you begin this arduous process, it's best to make sure you qualify as a genuine non-profit. A non-profit cannot be created for anyone's personal gain or be for the benefit of a political party. It must be a true charitable organization dedicated to serving the greater good.

If mulling over the above questions hasn't caused you to have second thoughts about starting your new non-profit, then you're ready to get started, and the team here at DataIdeal is ready and willing to help you take those first steps!

3 Common Mistakes Non-Profit Startups Make

When you're extremely passionate about a particular non-profit cause, it can be easy to imagine that your success as a non-profit will be made on your devotion alone.

However, if you rush into founding your non-profit, without doing proper due diligence, you'll soon see that starting a non-profit organization isn't as easy as it looks. Here are three common mistakes that most startup non-profits make and ways to avoid them.

 1. Not Having a Business Plan. Starting a non-profit is very much like starting a business. It begins with a passionate desire to do good for your cause, but can quickly lead you to disaster if you don't plan properly. Having a good, solid business plan can help you formulate your mission and set goals that can endure when you're feeling overwhelmed. It's not enough to want to make a difference in the world; you need to know exactly how you're going to make that difference and who's going to help you, and what each person is going to be responsible for. A non-profit business plan is the first step to being successful.

For help with a business plan, check out the SBA's site on Creating Your Business Plan. 

 2. No Financial Organization or Planning. Starting a non-profit isn't easy, and many people fall prey to underestimating the startup costs because they didn't plan a budget or create any type of financial organization when they first began. However, with the proper tools to help track your donations and expenses, as well as a simple budget of all your monthly expenses, you'll be prepared for any financial burdens that may be in store for your non-profit.

Start your free 30-day trial with DataIdeal today!

 3. No Marketing Plan. Your non-profit depends on the generosity of donors, but without a marketing plan, how will you ever attract people to your cause? How will you convince people that your cause is the one deserving of giving? Having a marketing plan will greatly increase your chances of success. If you don't know much about marketing, consider taking some classes or enlisting the aid of a professional marketer who might be willing to brainstorm some ideas with you.

For help creating a marketing plan, visit the SBA's site on Developing a Marketing Plan.

Starting a non-profit is never easy, but with the right amount of planning and determination, you'll see your non-profit started on the road to success in no time.

5 Holiday Fundraising Ideas for Animal Rescue Groups

Let's face it, fundraising is hard. And, as an animal rescue non-profit, it's one of the single biggest challenges you'll face.

It's never easy to ask people for donations; but without the generosity of your local community, you'll find it nearly impossibly to accomplish your goals.

However, with the season of giving fast approaching, there's never been a better time to kick your fundraising efforts up a notch.

To help make your fundraising efforts fun as well as successful this year, here are a five creative fundraising ideas for your animal rescue group to try this holiday season:

1. Holiday Gift Bags - This is the pet version of feeding a family in need. Work with your local grocery store to prepare holiday bags for people to donate as they check out that include basic supplies you need like cat litter, dog and cat toys, dog food, cat food, etc. If you do both cat rescue and dog rescue, create different bags and let the dog and cat lovers give to their favorite animals. People like to know what their donations are used for and giving them the chance to donate tangible items can increase your total donations for your animal rescue group.

2. Work with Local Holiday Events - Whether it's a Thanksgiving parade or a Christmas play, get tuned in to local holiday events that have already been organized and see if you can get your animal rescue group involved. Volunteer to help run the event in return for a booth, advertising, or permission to set up donation jars in the area.

3. Santa Pet Pictures - Work with a local photographer or studio who is willing to donate their time to take pet pictures with Santa. It's a great opportunity for the photographer to advertise their services as well! Try to find a local farmer's market or pet friendly park to organize the shoot.

4. Holiday Dog Walk - Organize a holiday themed fun walk and encourage pet owners and their pets to dress up in their most cheerful holiday gear. Charge an entrance fee and give out prizes for the best costumes.

5. Holiday Party or Yappy Hour - Work with a local restaurant or bar (preferable a pet friendly place with plenty of outdoor seating) and put on a holiday yappy hour event. Charge a fee for entrance. Want to make the most of the opportunity? Organize a raffle or auction with products donated by local merchants.

The holiday season is the perfect time to kick up your animal rescue fundraising efforts, but it doesn't always have to be such a chore. Try to brainstorm more fun and creative ways to let your community give this holiday season. Have some other ideas? Be sure to share them with us below!

Explore the New DataIdeal Journaling Feature!

DataIdeal now offers a great new tool to help you keep track of all your valuable contact information - our new Journaling feature!

Our new Journaling feature allows you to take notes and capture critical information about a specific contact, such as who referred the contact and when you last spoke to them.

This is particularly helpful as a grant management system to help you track the many touch points you will experience during the grant process and will help you communicate vital information to the rest of your team.

The Journal feature also allows you to create a legacy of information that you can pass down from staff member to staff member, and help ease the pain of transitioning new personnel. With all the information tracked in DataIdeal's Journal, your new employee will be up to speed in no time!

Using the Journal is easy! Simply click on the "Contacts" link in the top navigation.

Then click on the "Journal" link in the secondary navigation. This will take you to the Journal page.

To create a new Journal Entry, simply click on the "New Journal Entry" link at the top right of the table.

Next, fill in the fields starting with the contact you would like to capture information about. The rest of the information is optional. You can mark the date, the person who referred you, the type of contact you had, as well as any notes you want to take about the interaction. When you are done, click "Save."

And that's it! You've successfully collected information about a contact and saved it in the new DataIdeal Journal feature! Just another way DataIdeal is proving a valuable grant management software for our non-profit customers.

Thanks again to all our customers who continue to help us improve DataIdeal! If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave us a message below!

DataIdeal Now Offers Year-End Receipting!

DataIdeal just keeps getting better! Now you can process all your year-end receipts at once with DataIdeal's new Year-End Receipting tool.

To access this great new tool, simply click on the Receipts tab in your top navigation from your dashboard. 

 

From the main Receipts page, click on the "Year-End" link in the sub-navigation bar directly above your list of receipts. 

 

You will then see a list of all your year-end receipts. You will have the option to "Print All" if you want to send your receipts by mail, "Email All" if you want to email your receipts directly from DataIdeal, or you can pick and choose each receipt to individually print or email depending on the particular donor's preference.

It's that easy! We hope that you find this new Year-End Receipting tool helpful and that it saves you tons of time and frustration when you go to process all those receipts at the end of the year!

Thanks to all our customers for helping us continue to make improvements and upgrades to DataIdeal! If you have any questions or comments about this new feature, feel free to leave us a message below. 

Donor Reports with DataIdeal

DataIdeal provides a robust reporting system to help monitor all your non-profit's activities.

Keep your finger on the heartbeat of your non-profit by putting DataIdeal's robust, easy-to-use reporting tools to work for you!

With just a click, you'll be able to run more than seven different fully customizable reports to help you gauge the impact of your everyday non-profit efforts.

These donor reports will help you make vital decisions on what you need to focus on next. Click on the images below to get a quick overview of the donor reports available.

Bar Charts

Pie Charts

By Donor

By Month and Donor

Want to test the donor reports of DataIdeal out for yourself?

Click here to start your 30-day FREE TRIAL now!

DataIdeal Mailing List Manager

With DataIdeal's easy-to-use mailing list manager, it's easy to create targeted custom mailing lists for all your nonprofit marketing and donation campaign efforts. 

Our Mailing List Manager helps your nonprofit maximize your contact list potential by making it simple to create custom mailing lists directly from your current contacts!

Want to send an email newsletter to everyone who donated to your nonprofit recently? No problem! Simply customize your search criteria to donors who made donations in the last month (or whatever time frame you would like) and then click to save the results with DataIdeal's custom mailing list tool. It's that easy! Your new mailing list is waiting for you to deploy.

With just a simple click, you can then export your results from our mailing list manager, and your mailing list is ready to use with any of your favorite email distribution or mail merge systems.

Click the image below to see a sample.

Whether you want to send bulk direct mail through the post office or an electronic newsletter, DataIdeal can you help you with your direct mail marketing efforts.

Ready to try DataIdeal's Mailing List Manager for yourself?

Click here to start your 30-Day, no risk, FREE Trial today!

Document Management System with DataIdeal

DataIdeal provides a safe and secure place to store all your important nonprofit documents.

From mission statements to pet adoption applications, our online document management system for small nonprofits ensures your team has everything they need, when they need it, to be successful.

DataIdeal offers a secure online document management system and library where you can upload and store all your important documents and files safely in the cloud. That means that those important files can be accessed by your team anywhere and anytime they have access to the internet.

Forget to print up application forms for your next event? No problem! Just access your online document management library and download the forms you need. It's that easy!

So, say goodbye to your old paper filing system, lost thumb drives, and crashed hard disks. And, say hello to the organized digital storage system with daily backup-up and user audit that you'll find with DataIdeal.

Ready to test-drive the power of DataIdeal's online document management system for yourself?

Sign up for a FREE 30-day, no risk, trial today!

Charitable Donation Receipts with DataIdeal

One-Click Receipting with DataIdeal makes sending donation receipts a snap.

Don't waste time fumbling with massive amounts of paperwork in order to send donation receipts out to your donors.

DataIdeal offers our proprietary one-click receipting that will automatically generate and send a professional receipt based on the donation information you already entered! The donation receipt templates are built right into the system so there's no extra work on your part.

When you want to complete your receipting, all you have to do is click the donation receipt button to email or print all your receipts at once. There's even an option to print pre-formatted mailing addresses that will fit on your standard Avery label!

The powerful One-Click receipting feature also means your staff and volunteers don't need to learn any complex mail merge procedures or special formatting techniques. So they can be up and running donation receipts in no time at all! They simply click a button and it's done!

Take a look at the following video to see for yourself how easy DataIdeal's One-Click receipting can be!

   

Ready to test-drive the One-Click donation receipt tools in DataIdeal for yourself? 

 

Click here to start your 30 day, no risk, free trial!

Online Donor Management with DataIdeal

Tracking your donations has never been easier... with DataIdeal at your side! That's because DataIdeal’s custom donation management system allows you to capture donation details quickly and effortlessly without having to learn any advanced or confusing donor software.

Our donor database for nonprofits can help simplify your life by offering easy-to-use donation management tools. If you can type, then you can use this system. It's that easy. Simply input the date, the donation amount, and assign it to a donor, and DataIdeal will do the rest!

See the video below to see just how easy it is to add a donation to DataIdeal!




Here at DataIdeal, we know how important our customers' time is. That's why we make it our personal mission to empower our customers so they can focus on doing what they do best - making a difference, not spending countless hours fighting with their online donation management system.

With DataIdeal's easy-to-use, super simple donation management system, adding donations is a breeze. And, to help speed up donor management even more, we've incorporated a "Quick Add" feature that allows fast entry of bulk donations, so you can process your donations in no time flat! You also have the ability to search and run robust custom reports with just a few clicks of your mouse.

DataIdeal also makes it easy to track all of your fundraising campaigns and marketing efforts to help you keep tabs on what's working and what's not with our simple, yet powerful, tracking tools. 

So, if you're a new nonprofit in search of the perfect donation management system, or you're a small seasoned nonprofit who's had it up to here with your old online donor management system, then it's time to give DataIdeal's powerful, yet simple, tools a test drive with our free 30 day, no risk, trial.

Click here now to sign up!

Online Fundraising CRM and Grant Management with DataIdeal

Finding the perfect online fundraising CRM and grant management tool for your small non-profit can be a real challenge. Some online CRM programs offer you way too much information, and you soon get swallowed in the overkill of bells and whistles that you simply don't need. Other web CRM programs offer only the bare bones minimum that won't get you very far as you continue to grow your non-profit.

That's why DataIdeal strikes the perfect balance between power and simplicity, giving you tools that are easy to use, and yet extremely effective.

All Your Contacts, All the Time

Because DataIdeal is an online fundraising CRM, you'll be able to store all your non-profit contact information in a safe, secure place that you can tap into anywhere you have access to the internet!

That means, no matter where you are, you'll have your complete contact database with you and your team at all times!

At a fundraising event and need to contact a potential donor to set up a meeting? No problem! With DataIdeal as your online fundraising CRM, all you have to do is sign in to our secure online system, and you'll have instant access to all your contact's pertinent information. It's that easy!

A Powerfully Effective Grant Management Solution

In addition to being an amazing online fundraising CRM, DataIdeal is also a powerful grant management solution! Using our unique Journaling feature, you'll be able to effectively manage your relationships with foundations and track your proposal status and key conversations with ease.

It's simple to use and extremely effective as a grant management tool. All you need to do is track your notes, thoughts, and deliverables in a Journal that's associated with the foundation contact, and you can capture any and all important information that you can refer to at any time.

You can also use DataIdeal to mark the current status of your proposal by selecting what stage the process is in and whether it's been accepted or declined.

Need a refresher on the last phone call you had regarding your proposal? Just check the Journal you created and read over all your previous notes to ensure you're up to date on all the latest information. There's no better way to impress than to have all your ducks in a row. With DataIdeal, you'll have no problem tracking your progress.

Tap into DataIdeal's Volunteer and Staff Recruitment Tracking

Because you can track your conversations and notes with DataIdeal's comprehensive Journaling tool, you'll also be able to capture vital information about the people you meet and work with.

Maybe you have certain volunteers who are only available in the summer months? Or maybe you want to make note of what staff members worked at a particular fundraising event? It's all here for you with DataIdeal's comprehensive contact Journaling system. 

You can even use the Journaling system to track all your recruiting efforts to keep tabs on who you've talked to, where you met them, and the best way to reach them when you need to follow up. 

Whatever information you want to capture about your staff and volunteer network, DataIdeal will help you manage each and every person who has contributed to your small non-profit.

If you're ready to experience for yourself DataIdeal as an Online Fundraising CRM and Grant Management Tool, then click here to get started with a FREE 30-day trial.

CCDA Conference Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary

Cultivate. A word that evokes images of growth and change. It inspires us to action, to cherish life with careful ministrations, and is a fitting theme for this year's CCDA Conference, as members gather this week in the city that personifies new life - New Orleans.

For 25 years, members of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) have come together at their annual conference to celebrate and share some of their best practices with Christians from all over the world. Their mission is to "inspire, train, and connect Christians who seek to bear witness to the Kingdom of God by reclaiming and restoring under-resourced communities."

The conference is intended to help train and support Christians in their efforts to restore broken and impoverished communities. Attendees will benefit from the synergistic energy that permeates the event as well as the wealth of knowledge found in the numerous workshops and speaking sessions hosted by industry experts who have on-the-ground experience.

More than 2,500 people from all over the world are expected to attend this four-day conference as practitioners plan on sharing their knowledge and expertise with each other in what will surely be an inspirational and highly educational event.

Here at DataIdeal, our team is extremely proud to have so many CCDA organizations as our clients, some for almost 13 years now!

For more information about the CCDA Conference and the overall mission of the CCDA, visit www.ccda.org.

DataIdeal Blog Launched

Welcome to the DataIdeal Online Fundraising and Donor Tracking blog. This team blog will feature articles from professionals in a range of fields and sectors dedicated to helping small non-profits be more effective at executing your core mission. Follow this discussion to learn more about online fundraising, donor tracking, donor management, mailing lists and newsletter tips, plus much more.