Help Rename the NPA Newsletter

We just mailed our 493rd issue of e-Fund News! The week of July 12, NPA will celebrate the 500th issue of our email newsletter. In honor of that occasion, we’ve decided to hold a contest to rename the newsletter. Why?

Well, the name is boring – we admit it. When this newsletter was started in 1999, everything electronic was named with an “e.” Now, the newsletter needs a more relevant name. More importantly, it needs a name that is relevant to our subscribers.

So, we are leaving it to you, the users, the subscribers, the audience, the idea makers. NPA wants YOU to come up with a new name for e-Fund. Now, for the nitty-gritty specifics:

Awards:

• Each nonprofit that submits an idea will receive a FREE copy of The Complete E-append Guide for Nonprofits ($119 value).
• The winner will receive a FREE Single Page Audit for your nonprofit organization’s site ($1,800 value).

Guidelines:

• The name must be catchy.
• The name must be original, and cannot play off of another newsletter currently in the marketplace.
• All submissions must come from an employee, volunteer or board member of a 501 C organization.
• All submissions should be sent to efund@npadvisors.com
• Entries should include a suggested name, an explanation for why that name was chosen (in 100 words or less), entrant's name, entrant’s organization, title, complete address, and telephone number.
• We reserve the right to disregard/ignore/revoke any submission.
• All submissions must be sent before June 30, 2006 at 11:59 PM EST.

So, why wait. Start thinking of the new name and shoot it on over to efund@npadvisors.com, or add a comment here.

"Robin Hood Marketing" hits the target for nonprofits

Katya Andresen of NetworkForGood just published an easy-to-read book for nonprofits that has strong internet implications (though it applies to ALL nonprofit marketing, fundraising and communications). The subtitle is "Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes." If this stuff is so basic, why do nonprofits fail to grasp it?

Gems:

• You don't have to convert them to your cause... just get them to do something you want (give money, sign a petition, change one behavior).
• If you can't visualize your audience doing what you're asking them to do (in an email, letter or full page ad), like writing a check or showing up at a rally, then your marketing message is going to fail.

Read one chapter a night, then change one marketing behavior the next morning. You and your cause will be better for it.

Rick...

Online Retail Sales Continue Steady Slow Growth

Last week the first quarter's retail sales and e-commerce sales numbers were released by the Dept. of Commerce. They show that retail sales online continue their steady growth. On an adjusted basis, they grew slightly as a percentage of all retail sales, to 2.6%, up from 2.5% in the fourth quarter of 2005. Read the full report.

The Census Department has been tracking this data, and NPA has been reporting this data, since the fourth quarter of 1999, when online sales were 0.6% of all retail sales.

Techsoup Announces Norton Internet Security Deal for Nonprofits

Symantec is making a special donation of Norton Internet Security 2005 retail versions available to nonprofits at TechSoup Stock for a very low admin fee. Please note that this is a special one-time donation that may not be available again.

If your organization has ordered from TechSoup Stock in the past and has reached its Symantec donation quantity limits, you may still order this special donation, which is independent of the regular Symantec Desktop Product Donation Program. A 10-pack of Norton Internet Security 2005 is available for $60 ($6 per box), including shipping and handling. Norton Internet Security 2005 is an all-in-one solution for keeping your computers safe and secure from viruses, hackers, and privacy threats.

To request a donation or to learn more about the special Symantec donation:

www.techsoup.org/stock/symantecpromo.asp

NonProfit Times Digital Edition is a role model

The NonProfit Times, the useful newspaper for nonprofit fundraising, recently began a digital version that exactly mirrors their print version. It's not a lame, static PDF. It uses "nxtbook" technology that lets you actually turn each page, zoom, search, print, and soon, according to the folks at NPT, click on ads for more information. It's easy for readers, a tree-saving experience, and it has to be better for advertisers too. If you're not already a subscriber, become one.

Check out the February edition online as an example.

It may be too expensive for your quarterly newsletter, but the prices will probably come down over time, too.

Has anyone heard of "Charitable Choices?"

A Google news alert for one of my clients displayed a mention of them on a site called CharityChoices.com which appears to be a site that pushes people to give via the Combined Federal Campaign or United Way. There's precious little information at the site about what it does or why it exists.

With a lot of digging in Whois and elsewhere, I found a phone number in Washington, DC and tracked it back through Google to an address:
Charitable Choices
1804 S St NW
Washington, DC 20009-6123
(202) 483-2906

Naturally, when I called the number I got the recorded voice telling me it was disconnected. You know, "No further information is available about..."

The site has information about Hurricane Katrina charities, and its pages have a copyright of 2006, so it must have been recently abandoned.

If you know, please comment here. Thanks.

So who knows something about this organization and its site?

Nonprofit Postal Rates Going up (again)!

On May 3, the USPS filed a rate increase request with the Postal Rate Commission. According to the DMA's Nonprofit Federation, the average nonprofit rate will increase by 9.5% if these rates are accepted and instituted in about a year. That's on top of the 3% increase that took place this past January!

The full rate case is available on the Postal Rate Commission's web site, www.prc.gov. It's an awful site. I can't find a direct link to the rates. You have to click on 'contents' in the top navigation bar, then 'docketed cases and matters' (huh?) in the left navigation, then 'rate' under that, and finally 'R2006-1' in the menu in the body of the page. Maybe they could take some of the $4 Billion they hope to raise with this increase and make their web site a little more usable.

It's a good time to use email to start increasing response to postal mail, or for outright fundraising and dropping a few segments out of your postal mail schedule altogether.

Rick...

Senate efforts to restrict nonprofity advocacy

(another post courtesy of the Free Speech Coalition)

Here’s the current situation.

On 5/3/06, the House passed H. R. 4975, the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act, by a vote of 217-213, mostly along party lines. As passed, the bill does not directly address grassroots lobbying.

On 3/29/06, the Senate had passed S. 2349, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006. That bill has provisions which regulate grassroots lobbying in several ways. While we have previously sent you a detailed analysis of that bill and several examples of possible application, I will recap briefly.

S. 2349 would: (1) require quarterly instead of semiannual lobby disclosure reports; (2) increase compliance penalties from $50,000 to $100,000; (3)require a lobbyist to identify any organization which contributes more than $10,000 to a lobbyist’s activities in a semiannual period; (4) define a grassroots lobbying effort as one that reaches more than 500 persons and
where more than $25,000 is spent for or by an outside lobbying firm in any quarterly period (As you know, a single one-page ad in a major paper would cost that much!); and (5) define as a grassroots lobbyist an organization that spends any amount of money for in-house grassroots mobilization.

Since the House and Senate bills differ, they will go to a Conference Committee which will attempt to reconcile the differences. We do not yet know who either the Senate or House conferees will be.

There are many problems with the bills, but our main concern now is to ensure the House does NOT agree to include the grassroots lobbying provisions (Title II) of the Senate bill.

ACTION

1. As soon as we learn the identities of the conferees, we will advise you and you can then target your communications. Most likely, the list will include Rep. David Dreier (CA) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY), the respective Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee. Both have made prior comments suggesting a willingness to consider new lobbying regulations for nonprofit groups. Also likely conferees include Rep. Vernon Ehlers (MI) and Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (CA), the respective Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Administration Committee, which also has jurisdiction over this bill. Start now generating contacts with these House members.

2. Actually, all House members need to be educated regarding this threat to grassroots operations. We find that they are generally aware of the provisions in a companion bill to regulate “527 organizations,” but are unaware of the grassroots provisions in the Senate version in the current bill. Make them aware that they may soon have to vote on a bill including grassroots regulation. Urge them to speak out against, and vote against, any new regulations on grassroots lobbying. It is the right of the people to petition their elected officials and the Congress must not violate that right.

Dick Dingman

Free Speech Coalition, Inc.
8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 1070
McLean, Virginia 22102-3860
Phone: (703) 356-6912
Fax: (703) 356-5085
< http://www.freespeechcoalition.org>

FEC declines to regulate internet speech

(this post is courtesy of the Free Speech Coalition and the Free Speech Defense and Education Foundation)

Good news! A government agency has declined an opportunity to regulate more of your free speech.

In April 2005, the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) proposed to revise several of its rules, including those on Internet Communications, following a 2004 decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia effectively requiring the FEC to remove the former wholesale exclusion of Internet activity from FEC regulation. There was great concern among free speech advocates that the FEC might attempt to bow too far to that judicial directive, and to regulate cyberland press activities, even though the establishment print and electronic press were not regulated.

On June 3, 2005, FSC and FSDEF filed comments urging exemption of the Internet from FEC regulation, and stressing the need to modify its proposed regulatory terms to make certain that Internet communications were indeed exempt. FSC and FSDEF also suggested that, if the FEC decided to regulate Internet communications, such regulations should not be applicable to any communications except those originating within the District of Columbia. www.freespeechcoalition.org. Apparently, the FEC received more than 800 comments on the proposed regulations.

On March 27, 2006, the FEC adopted (6-0) its Final Rules on Internet Communications (effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register), determining that most Internet communications — all except for “communications placed for a fee on another person’s website” — are not included in the phrase “public communication” and are free from campaign finance regulation. Determining that “[t]he need to safeguard Constitutionally-protected political speech allows no other approach,” the FEC also “addressed several of its other rules to remove potential restrictions on the ability of individuals and others to use the Internet as a low-cost means of civic engagement and political activity.”

Importantly, the new rules expressly changed the FEC’s “media exemption” to provide that Internet users — even when praising or criticizing politicians and candidates — are exempt, like newspapers are exempt, from campaign finance regulation.

You may view the new FEC rules at http://www.fec.gov/agenda/2006/mtgdoc06-20.pdf and http://www.fec.gov/agenda/2006/mtgdoc06-20a.pdf (amendments).

There is also some interesting commentary on this issue at: http://redstate.org/.