Class Home Page
Welcome to the 6-Month Mentored Nonprofit Fundraising Certificate Program

The Course
Welcome to the Center for Sustainable Development’s Mentored Nonprofit Fundraising Certificate Program. During this 6-Month Program you will learn how to optimize your website and improve donor communications to both attract new donors to your website and to begin receiving online donations.

If your are a participant in the Six-Month Mentored Online Fundraising Program,
please use this syllabus for your assignments.

If your are a participant in the Twelve-Week OL 501 Mentored Online Fundraising Program,
please use this syllabus for your assignments.

Logistics

The class week begins on Tuesdays. Assignments need to be sent to me by the Monday of the week’s end. This allows students without Internet at home to access Internet at work on Mondays in order to send their assignment in.

You have signed up for a specific course within specific dates. If you are not able to complete the course within these dates, the Center allows you to take the course again for 50% of the normal course fee if you enroll in the very next scheduled course and use the very same project. Unfortunately, we can’t make exceptions.

The sidebar menu in the lower right-hand corner of your browser called “Mentored Fundraising shows:
1. This Class Home Page
2. A page for downloading the weeks’ documents
3. The background Discussion on the week’s Assignment; in this case – Fundraising Discussion 1; read this first each week
4. The Assignment; in this case – Fundraising Assignment One Homework Instructions

Each week I will ask you to download my example project to use as an assignment template. You can contact me with questions at: OL.341@csd-i.org .

Important: The Email & Homework Etiquette page in the Download Class Documents gives the rules of the game for corresponding with us and for posting assignments. Please print it out and read it first.

The Class Project
This class is designed to be fun. We are each going to develop our own project – hopefully a real Online Fundraising project. Each one of your assignments is actually a concrete element in building your project. I will comment on the development of each of your projects and will post my own project components as examples for you to see and use for ideas.

Please use my examples as templates for your project. They are formatted such that one week is the building block for the next week and therefore we need to maintain the format of the examples I provide. Download my examples and just write right over the top of what I’ve written. In this manner you will learn the system and be guided in thinking through the components of your project. This will also make it much easier for me to read through each of your assignments as each participant’s will all have the same look and feel.

I will review each one of your assignments and make suggestions. In this manner, I get to know you through our correspondence, and I become familiar with each of your assignments. My suggestions are meant to keep your assignment ‘on track’. There are very specific steps that we work through and each project usually needs a bit of guidance in preparation for the next assignment. Do not move onto the next assignment until you have received my comments on the current assignment.

Please send photos of you, your project, the community you are working with – and I will post them in the newsletter. For some tips on taking good photos please look at the Newsletter: Capturing Compelling Field Photos.

Class Rules
1. Schedule. The work load is between 4 and 6 hours a week. You need to stay on schedule. If you get behind the rest of the class, you will need to take the class again in the future. We allow you to take the course again for ½ price if you join the next class and use the same project.

2. Certificates. Certificates. Course participants who successfully complete a course on time will receive a course certificate. Learn more.

Your certificate will be e-mailed within 30 days after the end of your course.

Signed certificates are delivered by email in a PDF format for you to print out. We do not offer paper certificates by mail. The name on the certificate will be your first and last names as they appear on your Student Enrollment Form.

Course certificates are issued for all students from one course all at the same time—usually within one week of the end of the course. Students requesting a replacement certificate after we have issued a course’s certificates will be charged a $15.00 fee.

3. Email and Homework Etiquette: the rules of the game. We have had students from over 150 different countries enrolled in different courses. It is a bit complicated managing all of the incoming emails. We have developed a system that you need to incorporate in submitting homework and in corresponding with us. Please read the etiquette page now.

4. Our Online Course FAQ has answers to most other questions.

Syllabus: The step by step process. This mentored nonprofit fundraising program for nonprofits is designed in a progression where each weekly module represents one sequential step for you to take in the process of campaign design and development. The assignments have real tools for you to download, print out, edit, and use as templates over and over again in launching new initiatives. We will take approximately one month for each one of the following core steps:Month 1. Find Donors: Determine who your potential new donors are, what they are looking for, what you can offer them, and how they can find you:

• Introductory Week. In the first week we will have a chance to meet each other by telephone so we can learn more about your organization and potential online fundraising campaign ideas. Next step:

Begin Weekly Assignments

• Assignment 1. 1) Define your goals for nonprofit support and 2) the type of new individual supporters you are looking for. Do you want supporters that give a donation, volunteer, subscribe? How many do you need to meet your goal?
• Assignment 2. Get specific: Who exactly are these new nonprofit supporters you are hoping to reach? What causes do they want to support? Where do they look for causes to support? What information do you already have current, similar supporters? Compile this information and place it beneath Assignment One’s goal list.
• Assignment 3. What does your nonprofit do? Specifically, in a sound bite, let’s make this sound attractive to your new supporters

Month 2. Email List Building. Capture Names: How to capture valuable new subscribers—and then send them newsletters that convert them into donors.

• Assignment 4. Let’s do a quick website review: Does it have quick and easy navigation? Is it mobile friendly and well organized for future growth?
• Assignment 5. Collecting subscribers. What information should you ask of a new subscriber on your signup form?
• Assignment 6. Installing sign-up forms and popups on your website. Which type? Where should they pop up? What should they say?.
• Assignment 7. Incentives: Do you have a free offer? Compiling an e-book or membership program to entice new subscribers.

Month 3. Planning online fundraising campaigns.

• Assignment 8. Channels: Your communication connection: where will you launch your first campaign? Clearly define the channels that connect you to your target supporters: newsletter, blog or social media?
• Assignment 9. Calendar: Develop an achievable communications calendar.
• Assignment 10. Write faster: Writing techniques for getting the job done. Get triple duty out of a blog post/landing page by using it as the basis for a newsletter, for social media, and for a free e-book too.
• Assignment 11. Compelling 2-page fact sheet: Packaging your program/project so that is compelling to donors.

Month 4. Keywords and Simple Landing Pages: The importance of landing pages, keywords and conversions.

• Assignment 12. Keywords and the 21st Century communication secret: [Shhh… It’s all about them! Your website visitors.]. Use the same language your visitors use.
• Assignment 13. Landing pages are your salesmen: They convert a casual visitor into a donor, volunteer or subscriber.
• Assignment 14. 12 steps to building a perfect landing page template. Plus, a bonus checklist.
• Assignment 15. Turning your MS Word landing page from assignments 13 and 14 into a real, live, webpage.

Month 5. Email Newsletters. Romance your Subscribers.

• Assignment 16. Demystifying SEO. Use keywords in your headings, page title, page description and content. Post information rich, long content.
• Assignment 17. Email subject lines. Your chance to be both creative and a Sherlock too.
• Assignment 18. Email layout: What should your email look like? How long? What will lure subscribers to click through to an actionable, online donation landing page?

We’ve covered a lot of advanced territory over the past 4 to 5 months. Now it’s time to begin compiling what you’ve learned into an online donation campaign. Hopefully, you saved all of the PDFs from the different assignments for your review.

• Assignment 19. Write a new, compelling newsletter as part of your first online donation campaign. Create a master newsletter template for replicable efficiency.

Month 6. Tying it all together. You will launch and promote your first nonprofit fundraising communication using templates that I provide.

• Assignment 20. Making the final connection between your newsletter and your landing page:
  • Make sure that your newsletter and your landing page templates are dovetailed together for ensuring that there is consistency between what the reader reads in your newsletter and finds on your landing page.
  • Incorporate a call to action in both the newsletter and in your online donation landing page: convert visitors into donors.
  • Proof read: Final check: Yoast SEO, mobile friendly format, readability (send samples to different devices), check links, and check payment systems.
• Assignment 21. Launch your campaign: How to proofread, send and promote your 1st newsletter of the campaign.
• Assignment 22. Track your performance over the first week and watch it grow.
• Assignment 23. List what you would do better next time while the experience is still fresh in your mind.

Now that we’ve gotten past the rules we can begin our adventure together and have a lot of fun in the process.

So what’s next? Click on the Assignment One Discussion in the right sidebar and get started in communications and fundraising!

Tim Magee