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Amber Melanie Smith

I am on a mission to equip nonprofit and social impact changemakers with the tools and resources to grow their impacts. Join me and over 65,000 changemakers on my social impact-focused YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/ambermelaniesmith!

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Empowering OTHER people to raise money for your cause

Empowering other peopleto raise money for your cause Read time: 5 Minutes How can you inspire other people to fundraise for your nonprofit? If you could do that, it would be like growing your fundraising team by 5, or 10, or 50. Can you imagine?! 😮 Peer to Peer fundraising can be an effective strategy for expanding the capacity of your fundraising efforts – but it won’t be successful without some key things in place. In this issue of Changemaker Mondays ☀️ ☕ 🌍, let’s go over a few tips for...

5 Focus Areas to End2024 STRONG Read time: 5 Minutes December is a big month for nonprofits. But with some intentionality and focus, we can make it through this busy season without feeling overwhelmed. That’s the dream, am I right? 😅 If you’re feeling frazzled, I thought it might help to focus on a few items you might consider prioritizing in the coming month. So in this issue of Changemaker Mondays ☀️ ☕ 🌍, let’s work together to turn chaos into strategy. Changemaker Mondays is brought to you...

6 Creative Ways toShowcase Your Impacts Read time: 5 Minutes Impact is our WHY. We’re all in this because we believe our work will make the world a little (or a lot) better than it was. So how can we tell the story of those impacts in a way that will grab our community’s attention? And inspire continued support? In this issue of Changemaker Mondays ☀️ ☕ 🌍, I wanted to share some creative ideas for showcasing your effort’s impacts to wow and excite your stakeholders and supporters. Changemaker...

From Strangers to Supporters:How to Inspire Donors Read time: 5 Minutes Honest question. 🤔 When was the last time you donated after a complete stranger sent you an email or letter in the mail asking for funding for an organization you’d never heard of? I’ve talked about this in past videos, but it’s extremely rare to get donations by soliciting from strangers. (Exceptions might include: campaigns for urgent disaster relief, large-scale political campaigns, solicitations from extremely...

Let's fast-track your progress.Enrollment closes TONIGHT! Read time: 3 Minutes Doing this work is exciting for me Reader. Especially this week! Even though I’ve been teaching about how to build a successful and impactful nonprofit and had the privilege of connecting with hundreds of changemakers over the past few years… There’s something about going deeper with people on creating an impactful organization that lights me up. And that’s exactly what I’ve been working on for the past several...

Ready to accelerate?Your Questions answered: Read time: 4 Minutes Wow Reader! Since the Changemaker Accelerator Membership enrollment opened last week, I’m proud to say there have been some really awesome people joining me in the quest to get years ahead in building a successful nonprofit! Seriously, I am blown away. Like this super kind message from one of our new members... 🥰 And of course, I’ve also gotten a LOT of questions. (Which I love!) Since enrollment closes in just a week I thought...

Tapping into theseRecurring Revenue strategies yet? Read time: 5 Minutes The dream: Bring in consistent funding every month for your social impact organization – so you can focus on strategizing ways to make the biggest impact possible. Recurring revenue can provide a safety net, letting you budget and plan programming with confidence -- but in my experience, many organizations aren’t taking full advantage of it. Yes, it takes some work to set up and grow. It’s not magic (or easy). But once...

8 places to find your futureBoard members Read time: 5 Minutes Finding and recruiting skilled Board members is a challenge that plagues many nonprofits, and start-ups in particular. I’m often asked: “How do we know what types of skills we need on our Board?” “How can we showcase our awesome organization to Board candidates?” and the big one: “Where do we even LOOK for potential Board members?!” (By the way; all things we’ll be discussing in the Changemaker Accelerator membership, launching...

If I started a nonprofit (again),here’s how I’d do it differently. Read time: 5 Minutes A few years ago (as you probably know, since you’re reading this 🙂), I started a YouTube channel. My goal was simple: Help people who were starting or growing a nonprofit figure out how to do it faster, easier, and more effectively. It's hard. I started a nonprofit in college. Over time, I figured out how to create a solid fundraising strategy, build an amazing team, and mobilize over 50,000 people in my...

How to keep those awesomedonors around Read time: 4 Minutes There’s been a lot of talk in the fundraising world lately about giving trends. Spoiler alert: Giving has been declining over the past few years (but there are signs of a rebound – fingers crossed!). Experts and researchers are examining the reasons donors stop giving (or start), and this idea around “transformational” fundraising vs “transactional” fundraising is taking hold. We’ll cover transformational fundraising and some...