For charities thinking about how to use online video to tell their stories or motivate donors, a marketing consultant has some pointers to keep in mind.

More precisely, Nancy Schwartz, who writes the blog Getting Attention, comments on a step-by-step guide for first-time videographers that the marketing research firm MarketingSherpa has made available free on its Web site until July 15.

The first step, as Ms. Schwartz distills it down, is to set a clear goal for a video. Want do you want it to do: Increase Web traffic, build awareness, aid a fund-raising campaign?

Next, select a format to help achieve the goals, and this covers the video’s length, content, and tone. (Do you go with a more-serious newscast-style approach or something more personal and conversational, for example?)

The third step is to select the right equipment, and the fourth is to perform the necessary...

Jeff Brooks is fatigued by news media that like to trot out the term “compassion fatigue” every time Americans seem less willing to give to disaster relief.

On his Donor Power Blog, the creative director at Merkle Direct, a company that provides marketing services to nonprofit groups, links to a news article that uses the term in connection with the “trickle” of aid to help victims of the earthquakes in China and the cyclone in Myanmar.

“It’s true that donor response to disasters is not always proportional to the seriousness of the disaster,” Mr. Brooks writes. “It’s often unfair and baffling. But I don’t think lower response to any given disaster can be blamed on ‘fatigue.’”

He suggests three reasons why some disasters don’t attract as much money as others: that the crisis is too obscure, complex, or intractable.

The recent catastrophes in China and Myanmar both fall into...

Oxfam Great Britain came up with a great new tagline as part of a campaign to reshape its image, writes Jeff Brooks on his Donor Power Blog. The tageline — “Get rich quick. Give” is “donor-centered and true,” he writes.

But the rest of its image campaign is a “bizarre travesty” says Mr. Brooks, creative director at Merkle, a marketing company that serves nonprofit groups.

Take the charity’s new “color-saturated color palette” that he says simply makes things hard to read on a Web site.

“Please have mercy on bifocal wearing duffers like myself,” Mr. Brooks writes.

He then describes the charity’s new TV spot (which can be seen on YouTube ) as a “freakish example of abstractionism” wherein “people vomit white stuff at animated conceptual words like ‘injustice’ and this is how the world becomes a better place.”

“What’s the deal?” Mr. Brooks asks. “Oxfam does all kinds of very...

When global fast-food corporations are bought and sold, investors and business reporters take notice, and so too might a few french-fry fans.

But Cindy Bailie, director of the Foundation Center’s Cleveland office, was more concerned about charity than food when she heard last week about the sale of Wendy’s International, a Dublin, Ohio, company, to the business that runs Arby’s restaurants.

“What will happen to Wendy’s philanthropic activities, if anything?” she asks on the Philanthropy Front and Center – Cleveland blog her group runs.

She writes that the Wendy’s International Foundation issued some $800,000 in grants in 2006, including $125,000 to the United Way of Central Ohio. And the Wendy’s name is attached to other charitable causes and campaigns as well.

Arby’s has its own portfolio of philanthropic efforts. (Indeed, she notes that the Arby’s Foundation, in Atlanta,...

Does you organization have a tagline—a pithy phrase that distills your purpose, mission, or methods into a few words?

Of the more than 1,800 nonprofit groups thatt Nancy Schwartz, a nonprofit marketing consultant, recently surveyed, 28 percent said they didn’t have a tagline. And of those that did, 58 percent rated them either only “somewhat effective” or “not effective.”

Ms Schwartz, who runs the Nancy Schwartz and Company marketing firm and the blog Getting Attention, is still parsing the data from the survey and anticipates a full report on its findings in June. Meanwhile, she is already disturbed by the outcome, having long been an advocate of the power of taglines.

An example of one she likes is the Sierra Club’s “Explore, enjoy and protect the planet”

“Your tagline is seen more than any other 5 to 8 words you communicate, Ms Schwartz says. “It’s on business cards, email...

Who should be leading community-development efforts in this country: individuals and nonprofit groups — or government officials?

Larry James, president of Central Dallas Ministries, poses that question on his Urban Daily blog.

He quotes a letter written by Andres F. Shashaty, editor of Affordable Housing Finance, that appeared in last month’s issue of his magazine. It is titled: “Who Needs Brad Pitt?”

The letter discusses the actor’s plans to help build 150 houses in New Orleans’ battered Lower Ninth Ward. While wishing Mr. Pitt well in his venture, Mr. Shashaty says if the movie star really wanted to help, he’d be in Washington, not the Crescent City.

What’s needed more than private philanthropic gestures is a new “national housing commitment,” he says.

“Imagine what might happen if [Mr. Pitt] traveled across the United States, stopping at troubled neighborhoods and...

William Buckley, elder statesman of American conservative thought, died Wednesday at age 82. Tributes have filled the news media as people from all parts of the political spectrum pay homage to the journalist’s erudite style, wit, and capacious vocabulary.

Roger Craver, a veteran direct-marketing consultant and self-described “raging liberal” gives kudos to the late Mr. Buckley for something else as well: his fund-raising foresight.

Writing in his blog The Agitator, Mr. Craver reminds readers that in 1960 Mr. Buckley founded Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization, and through this group, “was among the first to use direct mail to build financial support for a cause-oriented, advocacy organization.”

Mr. Craver goes on to say that Richard Viguerie, a conservative leader, cut his teeth at Young Americans for Freedom, and then went on to become a widely...

Most homeless people would be happy to have a roof and four walls to shelter them. They might not much care if these structures bore the imprint of a high-profile architect.

But John Roberts, chief executive officer of PATH Partners, a charity aiding the homeless in Los Angeles, sees big-name architects as the latest allies in the war to end homelessness.

In his LA Homeless blog he links to an opinion piece in a local newspaper describing how a number of notable architects have worked on housing developments in Los Angeles’ Skid Row district.

For Mr. Roberts, who studied architecture himself, this is a good development for one simple reason: better-designed housing projects have a better chance of being accepted by their environs.

“Probably the biggest barrier to building affordable housing is finding neighborhoods that will accept these new developments,” Mr. Roberts writes. “...

The United Negro College Fund changed its name to UNCF last month as part of a “rebranding” that included an updated logo.

The 64-year-old charity, which raises money to help students attend college, felt the old name sounded a little dowdy in the 21st century and didn’t reflect the groups expanded focus beyond African-Americans students to include other minorities as well.

Tom Belford, a veteran fund-raising consultant, says he understands that, but he still gives the group’s new name a C+.

“Acronym names are totally useless unless backed by years of mega-marketing and advertising budgets,” he writes on The Agitator, a blog he helped to found. “Even then, no one but the employees ever recognizes them.”

Where Mr. Belford feels the charity made a smart move was in hanging on to its longtime tag line: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The line is part of new logo, along ...

More than 250 colleges and universities now offer degrees or certificates in charity-related fields, such as nonprofit management or philanthropic studies. This academic arena is booming.

The news fills Jeff Brooks, creative director of an advertising and marketing agency serving nonprofit organizations, with dread.

“My blood runs cold at the thought of the coming wave of nonprofit ‘doctors’ (and ‘masters’) into our profession,” Mr. Brooks writes at his Donor Power Blog.

While saying he’s not anti-education, he fears that all these newly degreed fund raisers and charity leaders will have heads full of classroom theories that might not fit the cold reality of the charity world.

“Real-life nonprofits are like this: Each one is different from all the others,” Mr. Brooks writes. “Running each one is a matter of understanding approximately a zillion details. A good framework of the...