Fundraising, Affordable Housing, & Blog Changes
29 December 2005
Good Morning,
While looking for resources related to tracking donor prospects these things came across my desktop:
Fundraising
- Keeping Track of Key Donors is an article published Wednesday, July 27, 2005 by Michele Hickey, CFRE on Charity Channel.
- eTapestry is a resource for donor management that can be used for free for small organizations & affordably for larger ones.
- Here’s a fundraising affinity idea retrieved from Charity Channel on 28 Dec 05 by rmcox:
Wooden Nickel Program
Years ago Wild Oats invented a unique way to support local nonprofit groups while encouraging customers and employees to recycle. In an on-going effort to reduce negative impact on the environment and encourage others to recycle and reuse, Wild Oats created the Wooden Nickel Program.
The way it works, is, every time you bring your own shopping bags to the store – be it canvas, plastic or paper – they will offer one Wooden Nickel per bag, which you then deposit into one of several Wooden Nickel Banks as you exit the store. Each Bank represents a different local, non-profit organization. For those that would prefer a nickel refund, they will give you 5 cents per bag reused to encourage good recycling practices.The Wooden Nickel Program benefits three non-profit organizations every three-to-six months, and nonprofit groups can apply by visiting their community’s Wild Oats store and requesting a Wooden Nickel application.
Affordable Housing
Depending upon the source, Watauga County is listed as one of the highest rental markets in North Carolina. It is true that Watauga County has a higher than state average housing market & a lower than state average median wage (this is across the board for all jobs). It is routinely thrown around, by local advocates, that Watauga County is the “3rd highest rental market in NC, per capita”.
Personally, I use that stat to make the case that Boone is expensive & that metro areas are not the only ones with affordable housing problems. (Another piece of data is the difficulty of bringing professionals to the area due to lack of affordable housing.)
However, there is data that places Watauga County as the 8th
most expensive rental market in NC as determined using the “housing wage”. [The housing wage is the dollar amount required to be earned to afford a 2-bedroom apartment at the benchmark 30% of income to be used for housing.] It is also the 2nd most expensive rental market for non-metropolitan counties—Dare County is the highest. (Dare County is a resort area of the NC Outer Banks—coastal.)
The “Universal Living Wage” and the “Housing Wage” are essentially the same thing. The Universal Living Wage campaign seeks to set the federal minimum wage be indexed to the housing wage. This creates a dynamic localized minimum wage & therefore headaches for business owners & payroll clerks until everyone adjusts to the system.
For perspective, North Carolina is the 22nd least affordable state ($12.14/hour housing wage). Washington DC ($23.56/hour) is 1st least affordable & Puerto Rico ($7.46/hour) is the 52nd least affordable.
Blog Changes
I made a few tweaks to the outline of this site. Primarily, I created two sub-categories in the link list (general & nonprofit resources) & added a couple resources to the list. Messing around with the template is a nice distraction; but, I temper all changes through the filter of usability, which causes a time lag in decision-making—something of a change in style.
