Doing Good.

What does nonprofit budgeting and forecasting have to do with “The Wizard of Oz?”

Let’s think back to the beginning of the movie, when Dorothy stumbles upon Professor Marvel, who conjures an image of Auntie Em in his crystal ball. Does he have mystical powers? I think not. A carefully adapted apparatus that provides insight and directs the subsequent actions of wayward Dorothy? Absolutely! If she had met the future dream state Wizard earlier in the day, maybe she would have made it to the shelter in time. While we’re glad she didn’t — as that would have negated one of the greatest movies of all time — in the shelter is where you need to be in real life.

A recent KPMG study found that a whopping 86% of consumers have a growing concern about the privacy of the data collected by organizations. Four in 10 worry about it being used ethically. What does this tell us? As nonprofit professionals, we need to align with the current consumer data privacy concerns that are emerging.

Before my time in the nonprofit space, I worked with large commercial B2C brands facing the challenge of housing and leveraging valuable end-user data. To be the trusted advisor my clients needed, I would regularly attend conferences to understand the challenges that marketers and their partners faced. Dreamforce, SXSW, Digital Summit. When my career focus shifted to serving nonprofit organizations, I found that by continuing to observe and learn from consumer marketers, I was able to bring novel thinking and alternative perspectives to benefit my new client partnerships.

My iPhone’s “control center” serves up a daily sampling of photos from my photo library, taking me back in time to pictures of vacations, graduations and reunions, birthdays, and weddings captured “On This Day,” sometimes many years ago. These strolls down memory lane are an invitation to revisit the past, but it’s not the oldest photos that give me pause lately — it’s revisiting photos from just one year ago. 

We can’t help it. We love making dashboards to help data-driven nonprofit organizations with their marketing and fundraising goals. And nothing is going to stop us.  

THD lens is a suite of interactive dashboards that combines a multitude of data sources to visualize your data quickly, cleanly, and in context in a way that would otherwise not be possible without significant effort.  

Today, we are showcasing our new Digital Marketing Suite, a collection of eight brand new dashboard views, which we customized based on our clients’ wish lists. Highlighted below are a few of my favorite views to give you a sense of what is possible with this next-generation set of THD lens business intelligence dashboards:

There’s never a dull moment in the world of digital fundraising. Staying on top of the shifts that have implications for your bottom line is daunting, so our Digital Team has summarized three recent, major developments in digital fundraising that need to be on your radar.

Read on, and if you want to go deeper with us, we’re standing by to take your call.

In case you missed the 2021 Nonprofit Federation Winter Conference hosted by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), or are looking to refresh what you learned, we are happy to share the Thought Leadership presentation we delivered with our partner, Feeding America.

THD’s Chief Strategy Officer, Linda Williams, and Feeding America's SVP of Digital & Direct Marketing, Liz Nielsen, discussed Feeding America's growth in the last year and meeting the moment of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As 2020 progressed, I heard many people wishing for things to get “back to normal.” For me, last year's events were an inspiration to move forward to better, not back to normal. 

2020 shined a spotlight on the many gaps in our society, revealing opportunities to make things better. I became more aware of how each of us has just so much time and energy, and I wanted to use both more purposefully as part of a collective mood and movement that makes a positive, meaningful difference. 

That’s why I feel so fortunate to join the exceptional team at THD as Vice President of Account Management. 

Recently, I’ve found myself tapping to the drumbeat of a rap poem that each of my kids performed in 5th grade about shifting of the tectonic plates (hard to forget … I have four kids so I heard it a lot) because, on so many fronts, 2020 has felt like the Earth’s plates are moving under my feet.

With so much seemingly in flux, envisioning the impacts on charitable giving (specifically) and the nonprofit sector (in general) is daunting. But as Chief Strategy Officer at a social impact agency, that’s in the job description.

To better understand the impact of the “events of 2020” on charitable giving, THD fielded research just after the presidential election. The outcome presented both immediate-term observations, as well as interesting insights with longer-term implications. While some of the data reinforces broader trends that are known to us, other data suggests new opportunities for those nonprofits whose focus is on building sustainable revenue streams from long-term donors.