We’re hosting another free fundraising webinar one week from right now, on Wednesday, June 17 at 3:30pm East coast time (12:30 West) all about fundraising with Facebook. Every time we talk about social media fundraising, there are always Facebook fundraising questions, so we decided to put together a whole session on using Facebook to build your communities and fundraise online.  We hope you can join us.

As you can see, we’ll talk about the basics a bit and then get right to the meat of how to raise money and build community on Facebook.  Since about 75% of our usual webinar audience already has at least a personal presence on Facebook, we’ll be sure to leave some time for your questions.  You can register now here: http://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/694448243 All are welcome but space will be limited.

We’re in the midst of a bumper crop of free online fundraising webinars.  This afternoon, we’re honored to have Mike Hennessy from the Special Operations Warrior Foundation as our featured guest in the webinar called “Smart fundraising programs for surviving the summer slump” with our own James Campbell.  There’s still time to register for the 3:30pm (ET) event.

Last week’s session, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics for the Non-Profit Organization, was a great success, and we’ve posted the slides, recording, resource links and Q&A right here on the blog.  And in June, we’ll deliver another of our popular social media fundraising webinars, this time focusing exclusively on Facebook.

We hope you’ll be able to join us at one of these events, or that you’ll check out our full archive of past and future fundraising and social media webinars.

Next week - Wednesday April 22 at 3:30pm ET to be exact - we’ll be offering another installment of our free fundraising webinar series.  It’s open to the public and will be all about writing the best fundraising letters and emails you can write.

Register now: http://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/744188305

We’re doing something a little different this time: we’re asking you to send us your best fundraising emails or letters and we’ll select a few to discuss live during the webinar.  We’ll remove any personal details, of course.  If you’d like to have your letter reviewed in the webinar, just send a copy to fundraisingletters@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you before the webinar if we choose your letter.

Whether you submit a letter or not, we bet that you’ll find the webinar valuable.  We’ll discuss common letter-writing issues like length, tone, frequency, email deliverability, asks, etc.  The session is free and open to all.  It’ll run 45 minutes to an hour and we’ll leave time for Q&A too.  We hope to “see” you there!

Today, we’re presenting a webinar called Competition for the cause: using fundraising teams effectively.”  It’s free and open to fundraisers and nonprofits alike.  Our own James Campbell will talk about some of what we’ve learned about how teams and fundraising incentives can help motivate supporters and fundraisers to exceed their goals.

As the good people at Team Firstgiving know, there’s a delicate balance between teamwork and competition.  Smart fundraisers know that people raise more when they fundraise in teams with some friendly competition against other teams.

We hope you can join us, but if you can’t, you’ll be able to see the slides and recording in a couple of days on our webinar page.

Watch video | View slides | Download PDF slides

The economic crisis has everybody thinking last-minute, and the holiday season makes it even worse.  So we figured sending out an invite for a webinar about last-minute fundraising the day before the event would be par for the course.

Please join us for Five Fundraising Days ’till Christmas, a Firstgiving.com Webinar with Fundraising Expert Margaret Morse Berwind-Dart, tomorrow, December 17, at 2:30pm East coast time.  Margaret will discuss some actionable tips for closing out the fundraising year in style.  Whether you’re a fundraising virgin going through your first year-end crunch, or a seasoned veteran looking for some fresh ideas, this is the webinar for you.  It’s free and all you need is a computer with an internet connection and headphones or a telephone.  As usual, we’ll make time for Q&A and post the recording and slides on the Webinar page.

We hope to “see” you there!

 From the Extreme Fundraising Blog:

If you go to a practice of an NBA team like the Boston Celtics, guess what you’ll see these world champions doing? Lay-ups. Free throws. Passing drills.

The very same basketball basics they’ve been doing since elementary school!

It’s the same with raising money: if you’re not practicing the lay-ups, you’ll probably never make any amazing plays.

We couldn’t agree more.  For fundraising success in a tough economic climate, it’s important to keep your eye on the prize and invest deeply in your donors, supporters and fundraisers. 

Need help?  Putting together an event for next year?  Slides and audio from last week’s webinar, “9 things you can do now for 2009 fundraising event success,” are now up.  You can download them, too.  And as always, feel free to drop us a line if you have more questions.  We’d love to see you be a champion for your cause in 2009.

This Thursday, Nov 13, at 2:30pm ET, we’re going to present a slightly different kind of webinar, called “Nine things you can do now for 2009 fundraising success.”  We’re not ready to write this year off, but it’s definitely not too early to get going on next year’s fundraising and event planning.  We hope you can join us.  Sign up with this link.

Fundraising expert Frank will talk about the three-part, nine-step framework for fundraising readiness and success in the new year.  Everyone who attends will also get a copy of the planning framework to help you start and stick with the program.  We hope to “see” you there.  It’ll be a great resource for seasoned experts and fundraising virgins alike.

In addition, you can see recordings and slides from most of our 2008 webinars on the webinar page.