ColoradoGives.org

We are happy to introduce our new Online Giving Coordinator, Lisa Lujan. Lisa joins us after working in development at Firefly Autism, an organization featured on ColoradoGives.org. She brings a perspective from the other side of the fence as a nonprofit—helping us understand the needs of nonprofits even better.   —     Community First Foundation and the ColoradoGives Team Lisa Lujan, Online Giving Coordinator Updating a profile can seem like a daunting task, but here are just a few tips to help make the process easier in order for you to create a stellar ColoradoGives.org profile in a reasonable amount of time. Use the Profile Update Schedule ( http://goo.gl/kV2S6 ) – A high level overview of ColoradoGives.org profiles, this document gives a summary of the most important aspects of your profile to update as well as a suggested timeline of when to update each section. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Rather than try to do the entire pr...

By Dana Rinderknecht, Director of Online Giving  What’s in a name? Is it reflective of what we do? Does the name GivingFirst.org really fit our program and all that this program has become to Colorado? These are questions we at Community First Foundation started thinking about over a year ago as we prepared to refresh and update our website. We have been slowly expanding our program across the state, but still have a reputation as a Denver-focused program. So, we stepped back and looked at how everything fit together and how it represented what we are doing. Friday, March 1st, it is with great excitement that we formally announce that we are changing the name of our amazing online giving program to ColoradoGives.org ! ColoradoGives.org truly reflects the local identity of the people served by and engaged with the website. Promoting the charitable opportunities in our state, ColoradoGives.org celebrates the people who have made a difference to the tune of more than $5...

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist, Community First Foundation Each year, after Colorado Gives Day, we compile a very comprehensive Report to measure results and learn about Colorado’s online giving patterns. In addition to basic results--like # of donations, donors and participating nonprofits--we measure year-to-year growth, results according to organization type, and more. Findings from our  Report can help you build your online giving strategy. Here are two that should mean something to every nonprofit involved with GivingFirst and Colorado Gives Day: Key Finding #1:   91% of nonprofits participating in Colorado Gives Day 2012 reported at least one new donor. (According to 84% of surveyed nonprofits.) This means that not only is Colorado Gives Day a way to draw in brand new supporters, but you also need to think about how to retain them. Draw them in: We know that many people come to GivingFirst.org to learn about nonprofits that align wit...

By Bryce Wilkinson, Senior Online Giving Specialist Another Colorado Gives Day is behind us! Thank you for all your hard work that made the day so successful. Now that Colorado Gives Day has passed and 2012 has come to a close, it’s time to start assessing the results. In addition to the data we collect and analyze, we also require feedback from you, the nonprofits, to help us answer questions that we cannot determine from our data and to provide us with a better understanding of the impact of GivingFirst  and Colorado Gives Da y. Online Survey This information is gathered from GivingFirst participants through an online survey emailed to each GivingFirst contact on Tuesday, January 8. We consider this survey to be your grant report to Community First Foundation about your use of GivingFirst, so please keep an eye out for it and make sure it is completed by the January 15 deadline . Video : How to Answer Survey Questions Since some of the questions on this survey require...

Marla J. Williams By Marla J. Williams, president and CEO, Community First Foundation and Stephanie Tuthill, board chair, Community First Foundation Coloradans, you are amazing! Congratulations and thank you for setting a new Colorado Gives Day record. In an inspiring demonstration of support for more than 1,200 Colorado nonprofits, you came forward from across the state to contribute $15 million on Colorado Gives Day 2012. This is an increase of 20 percent over last year. And this means that over the course of the last three Colorado Gives Days you have teamed together to donate more than $35 million.  Stephanie Tuthill We hope you feel good about the impact you are making—Individuals like you gave from $10 to $200,000 and each one of those dollars is truly valued by the nonprofits that do important work every day across our state. Work that brings food, shelter and medical services to those who would otherwise go without; work that protects our environment, improves...

Josie Burke, El Pomar Foundation By Josie Burke, Director of Communications, El Pomar Foundation Philanthropy can be interpreted as many things: hard to pronounce, confusing, reserved for the privileged. When El Pomar Foundation and the Boettcher Foundation got together earlier this year to talk about joining forces to mark our 75th anniversaries that occur within five days this December, we had to confront this perception. And that meant changing the vocabulary. If we were going to meet the goal we set--to celebrate our field by encouraging others to join us-- we had to ditch the big 'P' word. That is how we settled on giving. Everyone can give, even if everyone doesn't think that philanthropy is open to all. So, you will see that our joint anniversary logo mentions that for 75 years both foundations have been working, building and giving for Colorado. We jettisoned all "p"s, except for the one in our name. Having whittled the alphabet down to...

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist Are you a nonprofit counting down the days to Colorado Gives Day? If you’re like us, you are. You’ve got your list and you’re checking it twice. Here are our suggestions on what should be, at a minimum, on your check list. One of 4 places your appeal appears Make sure your GivingFirst Profile looks great! Submit final changes by Friday, Nov. 16, so that they can be approved and live in time for the big day. Write a compelling “appeal.”  The appeal is a new feature that lets you write a short summary (300 characters or less) of your organization that appears in several place: 1) in the GivingFirst home page when you get a donation, 2) in search results 3) in the checkout cart, and 4) on your profile page. If you don’t write an appeal, your mission statement is the default.  Consider adding a special appeal just for Colorado Gives Day. For example, “The Puppydog Foundation provides low-cost medical services...