ColoradoGives.org

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist Sometimes you just can’t wait.  That’s why you can schedule Colorado Gives Day donations in advance from November through December 8. Take your time, explore the variety of nonprofits serving your community, and schedule donations at your leisure. Your donation will process on Colorado Gives Day, December 9, and will receive a boost from the $ 1 Million Incentive Fund and count toward cashprize tallies for nonprofits. Are you ready? Here’s how it’s done: Go to ColoradoGives.org . Search for nonprofits by name, keyword, city, zip code or type of cause. Find a nonprofit to support and press the orange “Donate” button. Add your donation amount and press the “CO Gives Day” button to schedule it to process on Dec. 9. Complete the other fields and click “add to cart.” Want to donate to more than one organization? Click on the “add more nonprofits to cart” button on the next page and keep going! Schedule ...

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist Nonprofits featured on ColoradoGives.org are working diligently to prepare for Colorado Gives Day , coming up on Tuesday, December 9! As you prepare, keep in mind the following new website enhancements. Many of these improvements came directly from avid users of ColoradoGives.org . Suggest Donation Amounts on Your Checkout Page. You can now insert one or more recommended donation amounts with a description that will appear on the checkout page associated with your nonprofit. Log in to ColoradoGives.org as a nonprofit, go to the General Information section, select the Donation Form tab, and click add entry under the header Donation Levels. Create New Options to Direct Donations. Until recently, nonprofits were allowed limited options for directing donations through ColoradoGives.org . Examples included “Nonprofit’s Discretion” and program names. Now you can offer donors additional options, such as special projects or ca...

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist, Community First Foundation Each year the Nonprofit Toolkit —a web page for Colorado Gives Day marketing tools—gets stronger thanks to suggestions from nonprofits. This year we’ve added more short, informational videos and some select marketing materials in Spanish . Cesco Linguistic Services donated their expertise to translate our key messages for the graphics, such as the tagline “Give Where You Live.”  We can now offer you a Facebook "I donated!" badge and cover graphic, newsletter copy, key messages, print and web ads and a Donate Now button. And remember that your Spanish audiences can turn on a Spanish version of ColoradoGives.org by selecting the Spanish language option through Google Translate in the site’s footer. Access the Spanish tools , and keep your suggestions coming! Web Ad "Donate Now Through ColoradoGives.org" Button "I Gave" Facebook Badge

By Angela Bevacqua, Community First Foundation Our most popular Colorado Gives Day webinars are the ones where seasoned nonprofits share their experiences and success stories. Our latest webinar, Creative Marketing: How Three Nonprofits Met Their Goals on Colorado Gives Day , features organizations with very different missions but a common thread: creativity and thoughtful planning. If you missed it live, watch the 75 min. recording for inspiration and smart, practical advice. Here is a highlight of top tips courtesy of Autumn Bjugstad with The Greenway Foundation , Dan Hanley with Urban Peak , and Nancy Shane with Walking Mountains Science Center . 1. Stand out from the crowd Tell or show how your nonprofit is different. Personalize the Colorado Gives Day message.Do your social media groundwork 2. Build a social media following well in advance of Colorado Gives Day Make a social media plan and have fun with it.  3. Don’t be afraid to tap into your creative si...

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist, Community First Foundation After a collective sigh of relief that our ColoradoGives profiles are done (yes, we prepare one, too), it’s onward to more fun things! Now is when many of you will start implementing your marketing plan for Colorado Gives Day. Use This Pre-Made Ad For starters, revisit the Planning Timeline we created to help you prepare month by month. We also encourage you to make friends with the Nonprofit Toolkit where you’ll find key messages , logos , pre-made ads , educational recordings and a lot more. A great refresher would be to watch the following series of short Colorado Gives Day videos: The Key Facts Show this 2+ minute video to volunteers, staff and anyone who needs a basic introduction to Colorado Gives Day. Marketing - Best Practices This 6.5 minute video is a MUST for anyone responsible for CO Gives Day marketing communications and development. The Nonprofit Toolkit This video outl...

Last week we were very fortunate to have Emily Davis --a nonprofit consultant, speaker and trainer--teach a webinar on social media for nonprofits participating in Colorado Gives Day. Emily penned the book Fundraising and the Next Generation and specializes in multi-generational family philanthropy. If you were unable to listen to the webinar live, we encourage you to listen to the recording and view the slides . Below, Emily shares three of the ten social media tips discussed in her webinar. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - By Emily Davis, President of Emily Davis Consulting There are plenty of nonprofits out there that have mastered the social media world – leveraging all the right tools, telling their story, and raising funds through the Internet. Then there are those who are slowly chugging along looking for good reasons and ways to start to use social media more effectively. It’s not all about jumping into every soc...

It happens; we have all done it: forgotten milk in the fridge that goes bad, expires. If you had milk that was expiring on 6.15.2014, would you continue to drink it on 8.20.2014? You could but it would probably be pretty gross; thus no longer serving its original purpose of being healthy and delicious. As a person who always found the concept of the “renew by” date on the Secretary of State (SOS) Certificate of Registration  for charities and fundraisers a little confusing, it helps me to compare it to this concept of milk expiring. Think of the “ renew by ” date on your Certificate of Registration as an expiration date . If you had milk that expired on 6.15.2014, you would make sure that you bought more milk with an expiration date later than that. Your organization’s SOS Certificate of Registration is pretty similar. If your “renew by” date expired on 6.15.2014, as long as you file an extension with the Secretary of State’s office before then and the “renew by” date on...