Instead of focusing only on how board members can raise individual donations (or not!), think more broadly (and effectively) about how board members can support the key aspects of your organization's business/revenue strategy:

Pursuing a new funding stream for which you may not have the right people and competencies already is usually not the best place to start. Instead, Blue Avocado recommends that you see how you can boost and leverage the funding streams and people you already have in place.

Read the entire article to learn more about organizing your board to support your revenue strategy.

Organizing the Board to Support the Revenue Strategy, February 9, 2012, Board Cafe, Blue Avocado, by Jan Masaoka

You want a donor database that will provide clean data, solid reports, and happy staff, but the software itself is only half the story. How do you choose the right system, and how do you maximize its capabilities? Fundraising technology consultant Robert Weiner walks through 10 common mistakes that get in the way of selecting the right database-and using it properly.

Picture two nonprofits-the first has a donor database full of bad data. Donors are getting the wrong receipts, or no receipts at all. The organization cannot use the database to plan fundraising strategies or track its effectiveness. The few reports it can get are useless. Staff members complain that no one trained them, and they get no technical support. For obvious reasons, they hate the system.

The second organization loves its database. The data is clean, donors get timely, accurate mailings, the organization has a good handle on its fundraising activities, and staff get the reports they want. New personnel are trained on the database before they ever log in, and someone on staff helps them resolve any problems and questions that come up.

Both nonprofits are using the same software package. How can this be?

Ten Common Mistakes in Selecting Donor Databases (And How to Avoid Them), Idealware, February 2012, by Robert Weiner

AJFCA's Canadian agencies recently participated in a webinar presented by the Tamarack Institute of Waterloo, Ontario, an organization "dedicated to the art and science of community engagement and collaborative leadership." Webinar presenters discussed the role of social innovation in solving seemingly unsolvable social issues and noted some key success factors of sustainable social innovation at the community level:

• Think and act like a movement - we can't on our own achieve the kind of impact that we want in terms of reducing poverty, ending homelessness, addressing abuse, etc.
• Convening - learning how to speak and be together, how to be hospitable, how to bring people together so that problem solving comes in a civil and accountable way
• Marrying our social connections and economic power - create opportunities to harness market forces to influence operational practicestamarack
  

While it is hard enough to come up with a good idea, it is even harder to work together to implement it well. Three categories of innovation were discussed:

• Disruptive innovation - results from the efforts of "passionate amateurs" who affect change because of their dissatisfaction with the status quo
• Receptive Innovation - harnesses existing systems and infrastructure to assist in the disseminating and scaling-up of innovation
• Mediating Innovation - results from the linking together of formal and informal sources of innovation through collaboration
  

The critical importance of government's involvement in community innovation, particularly as it relates to receptive innovation, was highlighted. To read and hear a more detailed summary of the webinar, click here.