Madera Group

As the year-end fundraising seasons kicks off, Madera Group client Diabetes Hands Foundation (DHF) has launched a video campaign to raise $15,000 by the end of September. The videos feature the voices of those affected by the disease, while at the same time demonstrate the creative appeal and effect that personalized narratives provide to help raise awareness about diabetes.

It’s been an exciting four months since The Madera Group moved into the new David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley. We joined over 20 other public benefit organizations as anchor tenants in the green building, which has a high-tech and ecologically sustainable design.

Allyson Kapin has a great post on Frogloop, Care2’s nonprofit online marketing blog on 10 Tools and Strategies to Market Your Nonprofit on a Shoe-String Budget.  She writes: “If your nonprofit is not taking advantage of free tools like Add This, a widget that encourages users to share your organizations articles or web pages on the most popular social networks or branded toolbars like FreeCause, then your nonprofit is missing out on some big marketing opportunities.”

I liked Matt Wilson’s article in the July edition of the NTEN e-newsletter on the State of Mobile Advocacy, having written on this subject myself. Matt works for Mobile Commons, one of the vendors innovating with mobile advocacy. He writes: “There are now several vendors working in the nonprofit sector who have built target-matching applications for voice calls, similar to the district-matching features in the online advocacy arena. This is allowing organizations to connect their constituents directly to the phone lines of Congressional offices, skipping the Capitol Switchboard. This leads to longer average call times, as advocates are more likely to abandon the call when they are connected to the switchboard.”

Success in social marketing and fundraising means making our clients visible in a crowded online marketplace. Our agency works with clients to develop a strategy that not only uses social networks, but also persuades others to pass the word on. That means creating inspiring and thoughtful messages that work for both email inboxes and social networking sites. It means telling a story that communicates the meaning of the work we are describing, and showing the results that come from it.

Last month, President Barack Obama spoke to people of Ghana about opportunity, responsibility, and the important role each of them has in determining their country’s future. His message was clear: “The world will be what you make of it.” Obama’s words challenged and encouraged the people of Ghana to take control of their own destiny – Africans have already shown their capacity and commitment to making change, and now is the time for them to use those tools to create new opportunities for themselves, he said.

During the month of July, The Madera Group has collaborated with the William J. Clinton Foundation to launch an online matching gift campaign.  For every donation received, President Clinton will match each dollar through a personal gift of up to $150,000 until July 31st at midnight. The campaign has been promoted through a series of special messages sent from President Clinton, staff member Charmaine Pattinson in Zambia, and long-time Clinton Foundation supporter Barbara Streisand.

VolunteerMatch has launched its first ever blog for the nonprofit community called Engaging Volunteers: The VolunteerMatch Blog for Organizations, which is targeted at the VolunteerMatch membership of more than 75,000 nonprofit professionals and the greater community of organizations that work with volunteers.

The Madera Group supports United4Iran.org’s global day of solidarity on Saturday, July 25th. Untited4Iran is a non-partisian group of individuals working to end the widespread and systematic violations of the people of Iran’s human and civil rights. In just three weeks United4Iran participation has grown to over 110 cities worldwide.

The Madera Group is excited to announce that its client, California Attorney Joyce Tischler of the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), will be honored with the Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law Award by the American Bar Association Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) Animal Law Committee in Chicago next month.