Salsa Scoop> tag: ”blog:holidays“

Salsa Weekly Highlight: Ready your donation pages for the holidays

by Adam Rosenberg

Greetings!

It's the "Salsa Weekly Highlight," your quick hit on what's what in Salsa to help get the most out of your online program. As always, you can find plenty more news, updates, and conversation throughout the week on SalsaCommons.org.

If you're like most organizations, December is the most important fundraising month of the year.

  • About one-third of all donations Salsa Labs processes take place in December.

  • Those December donations each yield about 50% more per gift than gifts from January to November.

So we thought we'd share a few tips you can use to make sure your donation pages are ready for the holiday rush.

Donation Page Checklist

Perhaps the best way to start checking up on a donation page is just to make a donation yourself. Is the link easy to find from your home page? Does the ask make sense? What happens after you give?

Like any other page on your site, donation pages can "age" into obsolescence as your site and strategy evolve. Better an ounce of prevention than a pound of lost donors.

Here are a few areas to give special attention to.

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Get Validated for April Fool's

by Jason Z.

At least some out there have already noticed it, but in case you haven't: be sure to check out the "Validation" step of your email blaster today.

It'll validate more than your mail deliverability.

You're spectacular

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Thanksgiving Salsa: Fresh Jobs

by Jason Z.
Tags: blog:holidays  |  blog:jobs

It's a light week with (U.S.) Thanksgiving bringing food, family, and football this week. Salsa offices will be closed on both Thursday the 26th and Friday the 27th, and there are no trainings at all this week.

We'll be right back at it next week, though, when the calendar turns over to December and the critical fundraising home stretch.

And maybe there'll be a few new faces at the table, too. Maybe ... yours?


Salsa Labs (the company that provides organizing technology to DemocracyInAction and Wired For Change) has a whole slew of job opportunities for at least 9 exceptional individuals.

Those who join our team will have the opportunity to work with some of the most effective nonprofits and political campaigns by developing, supporting, and training on the Salsa organizing platform -- with the DLCC, DCCC, DSCC, Emily's List, Moms Rising, True Majority, Brave New Films, Oceana, and a slew of other creative organizations and brilliant online organizers working on the most pressing issues of the day. (International organizations, too.)

It's a great time to join the team as

  • Director of Nonprofit Business Development
  • Salsa Enterprise & Node Manager
  • Political Business Development Associate
  • Salsa Support Specialist
  • UI Engineer
  • Online Community Manager
  • Software Engineer
  • Systems Administrator - Entry Level
  • Lead Product Manager

We operate with the soul of a nonprofit and the savvy of a business.  People who thrive here are those who enjoy doing good in a fast-moving (sometime chaotic) working environment that’s always focused on growing and achieving results.

We pride ourselves on our team of talented, driven, entrepreneurial individuals -- each of whom is deeply committed to the organizations which we serve and advancing our progressive ideals. We also have a workplace that values work/life balance, creativity and innovation. That combination is the key to our success and makes Salsa Labs not only an excellent place to work, but a highly efficient and productive company.

Wired for Change and DemocracyInAction are equal opportunity employers and seek to build a diverse staff representative of the communities they serve. Women, minorities, LGBT are strongly encouraged to apply.

In additional to our casual work environment we have an excellent benefits package that includes:

  • 3 weeks of paid vacation (4 weeks after two years)
  • 14 paid holidays (includes 3 days between Christmas and New Year's)
  • Paid sick leave
  • Paid time off for volunteer opportunities
  • CareFirst Health and Dental insurance
  • Flex Time / Telecommuting options
  • Metro SmartBenefits<
  • 401K with percentage matching benefits

Please send a cover letter describing your interest and qualifications, your resume (in .doc or pdf format), plus salary requirements to: jobs@wiredforchange.com; No phone calls please.

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Happy Memorial Day

I didn't have the opportunity to post these photos of children watching Victory Day parades in Chelyabinsk, Russia, when they were current back on May 9. Now that I've shaken the dust of the road off, a long weekend (stateside) with a martial theme seems like a good enough excuse to me. Someday, this generation will come to you and ask, "what was the 'summer driving season'?"

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The Small Nonprofits' Guide to Holiday Fundraising You Actually Have Time To Do

Happy December. Snuck right up on you, didn't it? That cold sweat breaking out might the realization -- knowing full well that December is the development sweet spot, and especially the last week of the year -- that you've got to get that holiday ask out right quick, and you haven't had a chance to give it a speck of thought up to now.

Best Practices for a 3x5 Notecard

There are 18 business days from Wednesday, Dec. 4 through the end of the year, assuming you're actually working all of them and none fall victim to office parties, inclement weather, holiday sniffles, or miscellaneous NGO emergencies. For those also scratching out grant reporting, board cozying, postal mail soliciting, major donor massaging, admin drudging and -- oh yeah -- that part of the day that's actually about the mission all this is supposed to uphold -- finding as much as half a working day over that span to devote to online giving might very well be an achievement. And even that might be a questionable return-on-investment proposition if the idea is to, say, bump up your donation harvest by +50% ... from an expected 20 donations. I question how well those of us with the chutzpah to speak from Olympus on the subject treat with that reality for the small and the strapped. Take The Procratinators' Guide to Year-End Fundraising (.pdf), a new joint publication of Care2 and Sea Change Strategies. These are smart cookies, and there's some very good stuff here for building an online fundraising presence. But four chapters of 10 are about what you should have been doing for the other 11 months, which is rather the opposite of what the title promises. And many of the other suggestions (videotape test donors interacting with your pages?!) could only be implemented quickly by an online department so well-resourced that it wouldn't have been procrastinating its year-end fundraising to begin with. Other organizations may have a more basic and pressing question:

How do you get the most return for four hours' work on your online ask?

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Inbox Zero

Talk about Thanksgiving. There may be a few leftovers to feed the blog, but DIA is closed for Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday. We'll catch you next week for the homestretch.

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The Progressives Guide to Holiday Gift-Giving

Once again, we've assembled an assortment of gift-giving options that span the gamut of DIA's members and their respective causes. There are many awesome gifts available through our community that you can feel good about giving. The gift-giving ideas are seperated into easy-to-navigate categories. Make sure to visit them all!

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Happy Halloween: Mind the Werewolves

It's spooky that a site like ExecutedToday.com even has enough material to exist. But did you notice that there won't be any new dates from the U.S. for a while? Not that our fair country is exactly free of medieval superstitions in our modern courts. Satanic murder case, "pretty much a witch hunt"?

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Happy United Nations Day

By way of Salsa users at the UN Foundation: the UN turns 62. Note the link to the Briefing Book by fellow DIAniacs at the Better World Campaign.

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The Progressive's Guide to Valentine's Day

Start out by sending your pals an E-Card to show that you care, courtesy of Oceana. Don't forget the administration! Ask them to lead the way in defending the whales. Whale hunting for commercial purposes must be stopped, calm returned to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, and the government of the United States must stand up with its citizens for the whales and the oceans that give them life. Still not sure what to get your Valentine? How about a special gift that is sure to warm their hearts and cool the planet.

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